PARALLELS MUST CROSS

On 8 October, the presidents Serzh Sargsyan and Ilham Aliyev held a meeting at the residency of the US ambassador in Moldova's capital Chisinau. It was the seventh meeting of the current leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan for the peaceful settlement of the Nagornyy Karabakh conflict. Like previous meetings, it was attended by the foreign ministers of the two countries, the OSCE Minsk Group cochairmen Yuriy Merzlyakov (Russia), Bernard Fassier (France) and Robert Bradtke (USA), as well as the special representative of the OSCE chairman-in-office, Andrzej Kasprzyk. After some time, they left the presidents to talk tete-a-tete, and their meeting lasted more than 3 hours instead of the planned 2.5 hours. Then they were joined by the foreign ministers, the Minsk Group cochairmen and Andrzej Kasprzyk. During the CIS summit, the presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan held another meeting, this time with Russia's President Dmitriy Medvedev.

As expected, the parties signed no documents on the results of these meetings. The cochairmen of the Minsk Group informed the media about the talks. The Russian representative Yuriy Merzlyakov said: "I do not want to repeat the basic principles: you know only six of them. There are about 15 of them." He noted that the three principles upon which the Madrid proposals are based were taken from the Helsinki Final Act - non-use of force, self-determination and respect for territorial integrity. The American cochairman Robert Bradtke said: "The positive dynamics continues. The discussions were serious and constructive. And since this was my first meeting, I was impressed by the presidents' approach and their willingness to work." According to Bradke, the presidents listened to the cochairmen, studied in detail the provisions presented by the mediators and made their comments and suggestions, based on which appropriate amendments will be made to the document. During their meeting with journalists, all three cochairmen said that the presidents expressed their willingness to meet again in the near future. 

Although the parties expressed their intention to continue the dialogue, the Chisinau meeting, like all previous meetings between the presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan in Prague, St. Petersburg and Moscow, yielded no practical results. It is symptomatic that during the Chisinau meeting between the presidents Sargsyan and Aliyev, the Armenian armed forces held large-scale exercises in the occupied district of Agdam, using tanks, rapid fire systems and artillery. At a time when we are often accused of saber-rattling and military rhetoric, the foreign media and politicians, as well as the cochairmen of the Minsk Group chose to ignore this arrogant military challenge from the Armenians.

It is obvious that the negotiations on the Karabakh settlement have stalled, and in order to inform the general public about the situation, President Ilham Aliyev gave a special interview to Azerbaijani television. He said that "... there is positive dynamics in the negotiations... In the last 5-6 years, very important issues have been agreed upon. First of all, the Armenian forces should unconditionally withdraw from all the occupied territories surrounding Nagornyy Karabakh." Then President Aliyev unambiguously confirmed our principled position: "The territorial integrity of Azerbaijan must be restored, and the Armenians residing in Nagornyy Karabakh and the Azerbaijanis who will return to Nagornyy Karabakh in the future must be granted the highest degree of autonomy. This is an approach proposed by the most positive world experience. This is a very democratic approach, and the issue can be resolved only in this way."

Ilham Aliyev said openly that the Chisinau meeting proved inconclusive, and the reason is the non-constructive position of Armenia. We can assume that this behaviour by Serzh Sargsyan is due to the expected normalization of Armenian-Turkish relations. In Armenian society and within the diaspora, this event caused a mixed reaction. I assume that Serzh Sargsyan, whose legitimacy is questioned by the opposition and who is sharply criticized by the Dashnaks who quit the coalition government, finds it very difficult to simultaneously defend and promote a compromise in the normalization of Turkish-Armenian relations and in the Karabakh settlement which provides for withdrawal from the occupied Azerbaijani territories. If he has taken just a tactical break to solve the former question first, it is possible to understand this. But if the Armenians and their patrons hope that after the normalization of Turkish-Armenian relations, it will be possible to separate Ankara from Baku and push the settlement of the Karabakh conflict as it suits Yerevan, then they are deeply mistaken. On this issue, the president of Azerbaijan also spoke clearly in his interview: "If someone thinks that you can easily solve some of the problems existing in the region, I doubt this, because the main problem in the region is the Nagornyy Karabakh conflict. This conflict should be resolved first of all. After this, we can find a solution to all other matters as well."

 In his interview, President Ilham Aliyev also spoke about the signing of the Armenian-Turkish protocols. He said that they "... do not envisage the resolution of the Nagornyy Karabakh question. But at the same time, the leaders of Turkey have repeatedly told us in their official statements and in private meetings that as long as the Nagornyy Karabakh issue has not been resolved, the Turkish-Armenian protocols will not be approved by the parliament and, thus, the border will not open. That has been said by the president, prime minister, speaker of parliament and foreign minister of Turkey, and we believe in this." The Azerbaijani leader said that Armenia will try to present the normalization of relations with Turkey as its political and diplomatic success and is likely to take an even tougher and unacceptable position in the negotiations. "There are enough grounds to say so. The process of negotiations and the events taking place at various stages allow us to say so. I am absolutely convinced that these two processes - the settlement of the Nagornyy Karabakh conflict and the opening of the Turkish-Armenian border - must go in parallel. Although there is no official link between these processes, there is still an unofficial one. This link must be preserved, and the two issues should be resolved in parallel and concurrently. Otherwise, the status quo in the region may change in the negative direction," said President Aliyev.

Meanwhile, on the evening of 10 October in Zurich, the foreign ministers of Armenia and Turkey signed "the protocol on the establishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries" and "the protocol on the development of bilateral relations", which were initialed with the mediation of Switzerland. The signing ceremony was broadcast by 70 channels worldwide. We should also note that the ceremony was attended by the foreign ministers of the cochair countries of the OSCE Minsk Group, which is mediating the Karabakh conflict settlement - Hillary Clinton (USA), Sergey Lavrov (Russia) and Bernard Kouchner (France), and Javier Solana of the European Union.

Just before the signing, there was a hitch which lasted more than 3 hours, and it almost derailed the entire process. Having found out that Armenian Foreign Minister Nalbandyan intended to mention the issue of the so-called "genocide" in his statement after the signing of the protocols, his Turkish counterpart Davut prepared to raise the issue of the Karabakh conflict. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had to intervene in this. According to semi-official Rossiyskaya Gazeta, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov sent a note to his obstinate Armenian counterpart: "Edward! Agree to the ceremony without statements" to eliminate the last obstacles. The representatives of Armenia and Turkey refused to make final statements in the end and limited themselves to signing and a handshake. Nalbandyan looked quite gloomy while the Turkish minister, Ahmed Davut, did not hide his satisfaction.

The protocols have yet to be initialed by the parliaments of the two countries. It is unlikely that this process will go smoothly. Apparently, the Armenian parliamentarians will try to amend the text of the protocols or supplement the ratification with some statement that is unacceptable to Ankara. The parties will not hurry to act symmetrically and the process of approval may take longer than expected. With regard to the most acute problem for Baku, namely, the opening of the border between Armenia and Turkey, it can happen no earlier than two months after parliamentary approval and the exchange of ratifications. If the Turkish leaders keep their public promises to the Azerbaijani parliamentarians and public that the border will not be opened without progress in the Karabakh settlement, the Armenians will have to wait for benefits from the normalization of relations with Ankara.

To ensure that Turkish politicians do not have illusions that these issues can be somehow bypassed, the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry issued a special statement which reads: "As we have repeatedly noted, the establishment of relations between one state and another is the sovereign right of the state. However, the normalization of relations between Turkey and Armenia before the withdrawal of the Armenian forces from the occupied Azerbaijani territories is in direct contradiction with the interests of Azerbaijan and overshadows the spirit of brotherly relations between Azerbaijan and Turkey based on deep historical roots. The Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry believes that the opening of the Turkish-Armenian border unilaterally will call into question the possibility of building peace and stability in the region. Taking into account the importance of opening all borders and communications in the region, Azerbaijan believes that the opening of the Turkish-Armenian border unilaterally will call into question the architecture of peace and stability in the region."

The provisions that Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev formulated in his interview and the Foreign Ministry statement explicitly brought to the attention of Ankara that a cynical swap - Turkey's departure from principled support for Azerbaijan in the Karabakh issue and Armenia's retreat from the issue of "genocide" - is unacceptable to Azerbaijan. If such a line prevails and is confirmed by the actions of official Ankara, then it will be impossible to cover it up with nice words about loyalty and brotherhood, and Azerbaijani-Turkish strategic partnership will be substantially damaged. It is unlikely that dividends from false Armenian-Turkish reconciliation are worth that. The settlement of the Nagornyy Karabakh conflict and the normalization of Armenian-Turkish relations should be synchronized. In politics and diplomacy, in contrast to geometry, the parallels of the Turkish-Armenian and Armenian-Azerbaijani negotiations must cross in order to achieve success in the region and to ensure long-term stability, security and cooperation in the region.