HOSTAGE OF GEOPOLITICS

The recent weeks were marked by a series of meetings between Azerbaijani and Armenian foreign ministers with the co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group, dealing with a settlement of the Azerbaijani-Armenian, Nagornyy Karabakh conflict. 

The co-chairs Igor Popov (Russia), Jacques Faure  (France) and James Warlick (USA) held  a number of meetings with Elmar Mammadyarov and Edvard Nalbandyan between 22 February and 11 March in Paris and Moscow, an OSCE statement says. The co-chairs continued working with the foreign ministers to resolve the questions raised by the Azerbaijani and Armenian presidents at the meeting in November 2013 in Vienne. The ministers pointed out again that they would like to solve the questions that remained unresolved and get the peaceful process forward. The OSCE Minsk Group co-chair also agreed to hold negotiations at the top level on a peaceful settlement. The co-chairs plan to visit the region next month.

The co-chairs statement says that they have not yet managed to achieve their main task in the short-term, which is to set an exact date for a new meeting between the presidents. And there is an explanation to it, which should be sought in Armenia as usual. The thing is that the current stage of the co-chairs' work on the Karabakh settlement process is going on the background of the dramatic events in Ukraine, including the referendum in Crimea.

To all appearances, before the situation clears in Crimea, one should not expect the participation at the meeting of the president of the Armenian leadership, which is extremely dependent on foreign forces and circumstances.

At a first glance, the separation of Crimea from Ukraine should be approved by Armenians, just like this was in the similar situations in Kosovo, Abkhazia and South Ossetia, East Timor and other regions, which Armenians stubbornly believed were precedents for Nagornyy Karabakh. Enthusiastic reaction from Yerevan came at first, however, soon after some time, they calmed down.

Now Armenian experts unanimously state that there was as if a "struggle for independence" in Nagornyy Karabakh, whereas it is Russia's aggression in Crimea. "The thesis Nagornyy Karabakh-Crimea is extremely harmful for Armenia's foreign and domestic policies, as from an international point of view, these two problems are not similar," the deputy chairman of the "Free Democrats" party , Anush Sedrakyan, stated recently.

In the meantime, the Ukrainian events are directly relevant to a Karabakh settlement. The events around Crimea are linked to the aggravation of relations between Russia and the West. Some even talk about the start of a new cold war between the sides. They talk about serious sanctions on Moscow, and the tone of the statements coming from the Western capitals only prove that the anti-Russian measures and the tension will only grow if the developments are continuing in the same direction.

Incidentally this is also one of the reasons preventing Armenians from overly happy reaction to the separation of Crimea from Ukraine. "Would not international sanctions on Armenia's closest ally - Russia - be damaging for Armenia's already miserable situation and its regional isolation?" is the question raised most of all in Yerevan today.

Anyway, the aggravation of the relations between the West and Russia, will undoubtedly affect the prospects for a settlement of the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict and not in a positive way. Over the past 20 years of the work of the OSCE Minsk Group, its co-chairmen, Russia, the USA and France failed to do anything substantive to solve the problem. Is it worth expecting any results now, when there is a new "cold war" developing between the mediators? If things develop the way they are now, they will need mediators themselves. In the worst case scenario, the work of the Minsk Group will come to a standstill completely, in the best case scenario, each mediator, namely Russia, from one side, the West represented by the USA and France - on another, will start presenting themselves as more important. Any of the two, are not in the interests of those who want a conflict settlement. 

There is one positive "but" in this question. Russia has already found itself in such a situation of being isolated and this happened in August 2008. Following the Georgian-Russian war and Moscow's one-sided recognition of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, Russia had been subjected to powerful criticism of the West - there were statements on sanctions, threats to exclude Russia from G8 and many others of what we are hearing today. They also said that Russia failed to present itself as a neutral mediator not only in settling the conflicts on Georgian territory but also on other problems, including Nagornyy Karabakh. However, as time passed, all this categorical rhetoric started turning into a more pragmatic approach towards Russia, which remains one of the nuclear  super powers that continues playing the first role in Europe's energy markets. Moreover, it was the post-August period when the most active stage in a Nagornyy Karabakh settlement took place. Russia, using the damaged relations with the other mediators, practically started playing the main part in settling the conflict. With the mediation of the Russian president, over the less than four years, a few meetings were held between the Armenian and Azerbaijani leaders.

Either Moscow was trying to prove that each conflict in the post-Soviet area has its own specifics, or it wanted to dispel the rumours on its own incapability to boost their settlement. But it was this period when the negotiating process on the Karabakh problem became unbelievably dynamic. Time will tell what will happen this time.

But it is something else that makes one sad. The international community is not really interested in the fact that Nagornyy Karabakh and its adjacent regions are under occupation. Super powers are dealing with the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict only in the context of other processes, that they think are of major geopolitical importance. 

It was the Georgian-Russian war that was a "more significant" process in the recent past. Now a Karabakh settlement is being mentioned in the context of the Ukrainian events. However, the problem of the occupation of its territories was and is a priority for Azerbaijan. Azerbaijan's duty under such circumstances is to continue consistently following its own way and not to allow others to take the Karabakh problem out of their policies. Anyway, against any negative forecasts following the situation of August 2008, Azerbaijan acted respectfully.