It seems that the West openly pressures Armenia to solve the problem. The newly appointed American co-chairman of the OSCE Minsk group, Matthew Bryza made some new announcements recently. In his interview Matthew Bryza informed about the issues that were being discussed by the presidents in that phase. According to him, the draft under discussion is a “circle agreement”, according to which “Armenia must take its military forces out of those Azeri territories, where they are allocated now”. According to this agreement, Azerbaijan and Armenia must establish new, firmer diplomatic and economical relations. “There are other provisions too such as allocating peacekeeping forces, providing help for regional development, in a word there is a package deal on the table”, said Bryza and added that some time after reaching an agreement it is expected to organize a referendum in Karabagh to define its status. It turns out that the Armenian and Azeri presidents have an agreement on the table, which they don’t want to accept yet. Bryza didn’t give any details concerning the provisions, which the presidents still haven’t agreed on. After this announcement, the RA president, who was in Minsk, said that nothing good came out of the negotiations held in Bucharest because of Azerbaijan. On the basis of the abovementioned, we may assume that Armenia accepted that recommendation, but Azerbaijan didn’t. It is worth mentioning that RA president’s press-secretary Victor Soghomonyan told “Regnum” news agency that the principles of the circle agreement that Bryza talked about are just a part of the agreement and have nothing to do with the whole agreement. “If in the future such things appear in Mass Media, we will inform about the whole package of issues that have been discussed so far during the last 7-8 years”, said Victor Soghomonyan referring to the documents of “a united state”, Key-West and Bucharest. “In fact, all these three drafts were rejected by Azerbaijan”, said V. Soghomonyan. Anyway, in response to a question as to whether the US was interested in regional energetic security, only Bryza answered that the US had three groups of strategic interests in the region, which concerned all the three countries of the region. “Yes, the US has energetic interests in the region and we are not afraid to say that energetic security is a strategic interest for the US”, said Matthew Bryza. He also said that the US had also conflict interests in the region and was interested in keeping the region free of conflicts and protect the territorial integrity principle of the countries of the region. “What I mean is resolving conflicts, the international borders of Georgia, and our official approach is that we are advocating the principle of territorial integrity of Azerbaijan for the Karabagh conflict”, said Bryza. As for the third group of interests, according to Bryza these interests are developing democracy in those countries and as well as developing market reforms. “The US president has told basing on our principles that stability comes out only from legitimacy. As for legitimacy, for having it, countries need democracy in politics and a good environment in the economy. And you can get both these benefits through implementing a complex of reformations. Accordingly we will develop all these three groups of interests all the time”, noted the American diplomat and added, “the importance of energy is not the same in Armenia as in Azerbaijan. Azerbaijan is a producing country”. According to Bryza, they are petitioning the presidents to accept the circle agreement, for doing which the presidents need to be brave politically. Answering to a question asking whether the approaches of the presidents were better and more positive in Bucharest compared to those in Rambouillet, Mr. Bryza said, “In Bucharest the parties were talking all the time. They discussed all issues in details and haven’t published any negative things after that”. The co-chairmen hope that this is a demonstration of a political will on the part of the presidents and that they will try to make compromises in the nearest future. “I am not sure, but we discussed a possibility of going on a summer break so as to see whether the presidents have a political will or not”, added the American co-chairman. Are the co-chairmen going to organize more meetings for the presidents? “The co-chairmen have decided to give the presidents some time in order to see whether they are ready to take more steps or not. The co-chairmen did all they could do”, said M. Bryza. According to him, if the parties manage to fulfill the requirements listed in the circle agreement, the relations between Armenia and Turkey will get back on their feet as well. “In other words, our diplomatic efforts are aimed towards reestablishing ties between Armenia and Turkey as well”, said Matthew Bryza.
In fact, the fact that Bryza spoke about democratic developments in Azerbaijan and reminded that Armenia had problems with democracy during the recent Constitutional referendum can be considered as an attempt to pressure Armenia. This year in May, the president of Azerbaijan was invited to Washington and the Georgian president is going to visit Washington next month. Is the Armenian president going to be invited as well? In response to this question Mr. Bryza said that the Armenian president didn’t have any reasons not to visit the US. He also said, “We hope to see the same development toward democracy like we hope to see in Azerbaijan. Maybe we are mistaken concerning Azerbaijan. Maybe we hope more than we should. But things are getting better there and we hope to see the same in Armenia as well. By implementing the “Millennium Challenges” program in Armenia we have hinted that these processes in Armenia are important for us. This is one of the best ways that we have for demonstrating a will of starting a good cooperation with a foreign country. When we started this project we sent a letter stating how interested we were in the organization of the democratic referendum. We expect to see positive developments: it is very important for our next steps”.
P.S. “To this day, Robert Kocharyan and Serj Sargsyan have announced many times that the people of Karbagh have the self-determination right and they have done that long before. And now they have to announce that the advocates of self-determination and the army of Karabagh have to leave the territories. We wonder what Armenian and the people of Karabagh think about this. “Zerkalo” newspaper writes that it is impossible to do that without taking out the military forces of Karabakh”. They also say that even though Matthew Bryza doesn’t say anything concerning this, according to the agreement all refugees that escaped from those territories would return back to their places. This means that Azeri people will also participate in the planned referendum. “Now imagine citizens of Karabakh standing close to Azeri refugees and peacekeeping soldiers in blue uniforms. In this case soldiers are a box of dynamites and the explosion may prolong the resolution process for ten more years”, writes “Zerkalo”.