"IT'S NICE TO LIVE WITH ILLUSIONS, BUT FUTILE"

No-one could really have expected any results from the last meeting of the foreign ministers of Azerbaijan and Armenia. On 28 October in Paris Elmar Mammadyarov and Edvard Nalbandyan met in the presence of the co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group. The co-chairs, as an OSCE reports states, presented their ideas for a peaceful settlement to the Nagornyy Karabakh conflict. They noted the importance of reducing tension between the two sides, and the ministers, for their part, reaffirmed their resolve to continue working with the mediators to achieve a peace settlement. The ministers and the co-chairs agreed to continue to discuss these ideas during the visit of the co-chairs to the region in November.

And so the main outcome of these talks is merely a meeting of the foreign ministers. Because of the hullabaloo raised by Armenia following the extradition from Hungary to his homeland of the Azerbaijani officer, Ramil Safarov, and his subsequent pardon by Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, many people believed that the talks between Yerevan and Baku would be frozen. But this, as we can see, did not happen. Nor, unfortunately, was their any progress in the settlement process.

Armenia's destructive policy, accompanied by the clumsy actions of the mediators, is not contributing to progress at the talks. There are four UN Security Council resolutions and numerous documents of other international organizations demanding the withdrawal of Armenia's troops from Azerbaijani territories on the table. That is why a priori Armenia's unconditional rejection of occupation has to be seen as the main manifestation of a constructive attitude. And the mediators are committed to persuading the aggressor to take such a constructive attitude and thereby help to get things moving in the process of a settlement. Instead of this they are trying to equate the aggressor and the innocent party.

Furthermore, the countries co-chairing the OSCE Minsk Group are calmly monitoring how Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan, contrary to international law, is taking part in large-scale military exercises on Azerbaijan's occupied territories, and what is more in the run-up to the meeting of foreign ministers and directly during the OSCE's monitoring at the troop contact line. And it was precisely after these exercises that threats were heard not only against Azerbaijan, but also its partners in trans-national projects, which also include the broker countries.

"In the event of combat operations Armenia is capable of inflicting strikes on Azerbaijan's oil and gas infrastructure facilities. This was the scenario that was played during the military exercises that have just concluded," Major-General Artak Davtyan, chief of the operational directorate of the Armenian Armed Forces General Staff, said at a press conference on the results of the exercises.

Of course, Azerbaijan is capable of defending itself against possible threats from Armenia and it is scarcely worth recalling Baku's huge economic and military superiority over Yerevan. Can there really be generals in Armenia who believe that Yerevan is deciding to attack facilities that are being used by world companies which would affect the interests of the major states? There is no doubt that such statements are meant, first and foremost, for a domestic audience. The Armenian authorities' top brass needs this propaganda today as never before.

The next Armenian presidential elections are coming up, and Serzh Sargsyan is resorting to all kinds of methods to improve his image, and not just among the ordinary citizens who in the Armenia of today do not have much of a say when it comes to questions of power, The main thing at the moment is to win the support of the criminal Karabakh clan, who grew rich during the years of Armenian rule and among whom sabre-rattling against Azerbaijan was always popular. Sargsyan faces the task of guaranteeing the forces supporting him a stable period in power, which in many ways depends on the successful protraction of the current status-quo in Karabakh and the foreign policy linked with this. That is precisely why today Armenian diplomacy is placing its stakes not on strategic and long-term benefits, but immediate dividends, which in the run-up to the elections it could present to the people as foreign policy successes.

In this context Armenian politicians and analysts are drawing attention to the visit of Armenian Foreign Minister Edvard Nalbandyan to Latin America, Africa and Oceania. "The geography of the foreign minister's visits is directly opposed to what is happening around us," former Armenian foreign minister, Vardan Oskanyan, emphasizes. "When the Azerbaijanis and the Hungarians ended their preparations for the extradition of Safarov, the foreign minister was in New Zealand. Recently, when there were stormy events happening in our region, the minister was in Africa, and now he's in Latin America," the current foreign minister is reproached by his predecessor.

However, one must give Nalbandyan his due - Armenian diplomacy will still know what to put in Sargsyan's money box. As this issue of our magazine was going to press, the Armenian media was widely reporting news about the alleged recognition of Nagornyy Karabakh's independence by the Australian state of New South Wales. "Whichever way one looks at this fact, in my view it is an aberration, and quite simply, nonsense," Regnum agency reports, quoting the words of a Caucasus expert, Andrey Yepifantsev.

He said that in the modern system of state and international law the recognition of the sovereignty of a country is possible only by the authorities of a whole state, and not just a part of it. And the Australian state, just like Uruguay, had not adopted any such resolution. "One may easily be convinced that the resolution of the Australian state is not an act of recognition of the sovereignty of Nagornyy Karabakh," says the Russian expert, alluding to the website of the New South Wales parliament.

The document that was adopted in Sydney essentially states that the authorities of the state recognize the right to self-determination of all peoples and they call upon the Australian authorities to recognize the independence of Nagornyy Karabakh.

Of course, we are a long way from the idea that we can break the habit of the Armenian authorities of deluding their people by engaging in wishful thinking. But, as Andrey Yepifantsev says, "it's nice to live with illusions, but futile. Let's get back to realities."