DIAMETRICALLY OPPOSITE APPROACHES

In early April, the co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group Jacques Faure (France), Igor Popov (Russia) and Ian Kelly (USA) visited Azerbaijan. Here they were received by President Ilham Aliyev who discussed the Nagornyy Karabakh conflict and the results of the co-chairs’ recent meetings with the foreign ministers of Armenia and Azerbaijan in Paris. On 5 April, the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs and the personal representative of the OSCE chairman-in-office, Andrzej Kasprzyk, crossed the line of contact and arrived in Nagornyy Karabakh. Earlier in March, they visited Yerevan and Xankandi.

The OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs are clearly active, but, apparently, their efforts are not productive. This causes unconcealed displeasure in Baku, which was expressed by the deputy head of the Presidential Administration of Azerbaijan, Novruz Mammadov, who is responsible for foreign policy. In an interview with the ATV channel, he openly said: "Our wish is that the co-chairs finally stop going back and forth in vain. They have been dealing with this problem for over 20 years, but they still have not expressed a specific position on the subject ... The leaders of the mediating countries have to think even more seriously and resolutely today and make a decision."

Any objective observer will agree that Baku has grievances. After the failure of the presidential meeting in Kazan in 2011, in which changes to the Madrid principles were proposed with the efforts of the Russian Foreign Ministry, which were acceptable to Yerevan and Moscow, but infringed on the interests of Azerbaijan, the negotiations stalled. Currently, not only the presidents but even the foreign ministers of Azerbaijan and Armenia are not conducting direct talks, but are holding separate meetings with the OSCE Minsk Group (London, Paris).

"In 2012, we witnessed a decline in the intensity of the negotiations on the conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia over Nagornyy Karabakh," said the head of the EU office in Baku, Roland Kobia. According to him, the Azerbaijan and Armenia section of the 2012 report of the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) contains recommendations for increased efforts to achieve a peaceful settlement of the conflict. Kobia also stressed the need to provide an EU special representative with free access to the territory of Nagornyy Karabakh. Baku makes this possibility conditional on the clear formulation of the mission and mandate of the EU, as well as a requirement to pay such visits through the territory of Azerbaijan, not of Armenia. The presidents and foreign ministers of the countries co-chairing the OSCE Minsk Group also call for the negotiations to continue on the basis of the Madrid principles.

However, the parties are failing to agree on the specific agenda of the talks. Armenians are shying away from moving forward the negotiations and are promoting discussions on topics such as the strengthening of the "ceasefire", the opening of the Xocali airport, the implementation of so-called "confidence-building measures" and insist that representatives of the Armenian separatists of Nagornyy Karabakh must be directly involved in the negotiations. It is felt that the Armenians would be happy to send the eight-year round of the negotiations on the basis of the Madrid principles into the archive and start them from scratch.

Azerbaijan, in turn, considers it unacceptable to abandon the discussion of the fundamental issues of the conflict settlement and to deepen the discussion of the themes promoted by the Armenians in their own interests. Baku also believes that the endless discussion of the Madrid principles is fruitless and that it is enough that the most important of them were disclosed in joint statements by the presidents of the Minsk Group co-chairs (L'Aquila, Muskoka), which were joined by the presidents of Azerbaijan and Armenia at the OSCE summit in Almaty. Our Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov has repeatedly suggested that the co-chairs of the Minsk Group start working on a big peace treaty. After all, not principles, but a specific agreement with the timing and order of actions by the parties to the conflict, guarantees, and mediators’ help will be implemented.

As you can see, the parties disagree not only on individual issues of the negotiations, but conceptually. Meanwhile, the arms race continues, and incidents on the contact line have become more frequent. The risks of renewed hostilities are great. This is stated in a report about security threats by US National Intelligence Director James Clapper to Congress. "Active rhetoric, distrust on both sides and systematic violence on the line of contact increase the risk of a miscalculation that may aggravate the situation," he wrote in his report.

In parallel, diplomatic and information warfare is under way, while the economic and transport isolation of Armenia by Azerbaijan is becoming more rigid. Since the beginning of the year alone, several US states (their total number has reached eleven) have recognized and condemned the massacre of the Azerbaijani population of Xocali by Armenian forces. Relevant resolutions have been adopted by the parliaments of the Czech Republic, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Romania. Armenians tried to create a so-called "Group of Friendship with the NKR" in the Lithuanian Parliament, but the idea of the Armenian lobbyists was officially disavowed by the leadership of the Seim and the Foreign Ministry of Lithuania.

Armenians exaggerated the importance of the proposed opening of a railway through Abkhazia, which would give them access to Russia and then to Europe, but apart from wishes of a general nature, the business has still not moved forward. The freezing of the much-touted project on direct Van-Yerevan flights was a blow to the plans of Yerevan. Armenian experts have no doubt that Turkey took this step because of reaction from Baku. Now the Armenian media is writing about the possible closure of a more important direct flight - Yerevan-Istanbul. This is probably Ankara’s early message if the Armenians step up their anti-Turkish campaign abroad ahead of the anniversary of the so-called "genocide of 1915".

Contrary to optimistic forecasts and statements by Armenian officials, the country’s economy is stagnating. Since the beginning of the year, foreign investment, which was previously scarce, has decreased by more than a quarter compared to the previous year. The fate of the coveted loans and financial assistance in the amount of 2.1 billion dollars, which the government of Serzh Sargsyan expected to get from Brussels or Moscow, remains highly uncertain.

Not surprisingly, the mass emigration of the population continues in this situation. This process has turned into an exodus since the presidential elections in Armenia resulted in another disappointment. According to a survey conducted in the second half of 2012, if the border with the European Union opens (or if the visa policy is relaxed to the maximum), about one million people are ready to leave Armenia, which accounts for nearly 40 per cent of the actual population remaining in the country. For comparison, according to the same study, if the visa policy is relaxed, about 470,000 people may leave Azerbaijan for the EU and 250,000 people may leave Georgia, which is in the range of 5-6 per cent of the these countries’ population.

Meanwhile, Russia, after nearly a year-long pause, seems to begin some activity in the Karabakh settlement. It is possible that they are aware that the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict, if allowed to take its course, can indeed lead to a dangerous crisis in the region. Russia demonstrated that neither Paris nor Washington are able and wish to take on the burden of the main moderator in the negotiations. The US and France are concentrated on the Middle East (Syria, Iran) and North Africa (Mali), while Brussels is involved in its own financial and economic problems.

It has been announced that Armenian Foreign Minister Eduard Nalbandyan will visit Moscow. This was stated by Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Aleksandr Lukashevich at a briefing with reporters in Moscow, but he declined to mention the specific date of the visit. Lukashevich also said that Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov will visit Russia on 20-21 May, where he will meet with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. It is possible that he may initiate a meeting between the foreign ministers of Armenia and Azerbaijan at least to resume the direct dialogue, but there is little reason for optimism. Azerbaijan considers it unacceptable to abandon the discussion of the fundamental issues of the conflict settlement and to deepen the discussion of the themes promoted by the Armenians in their own interests. It is felt that the Armenians would be happy to send the eight-year round of the negotiations on the basis of the Madrid principles into the archive and start them from scratch. According to a survey, if the border with the EU is opened, almost 40 per cent of the population are ready to leave Armenia, whereas in Azerbaijan and Georgia only about 5-6 per cent of the population are ready to go to Europe. It is possible that the Russian Foreign Minister may initiate a meeting between the foreign ministers of Armenia and Azerbaijan at least to resume the direct dialogue, but there is little reason for optimism.