It turns out that the current Armenian-Turkish border is illegitimate and there is no legal basis for that because there is no other legal document for the Armenian-Turkish borders besides the document signed by Woodrow Wilson. This was the startling announcement that adviser to the Armenian Foreign Minister Ara Papyan made. According to him, Armenia has to apply to the UN international court and reaffirm Armenia’s rights for those lands. Let’s recall that based on Woodrow Wilson’s border outline, Armenia was supposed to have 162,000 square kilometer area. After that, according to Papyan, Armenia can sue the operators of the “Baku-Jeyhan” oil pipeline because they are transferring cargo without getting Armenia’s permission.
Let’s try to understand the meaning of these extravagant announcements. Of course, Ara Papyan emphasizes the fact that for the time being, he is simply expressing his point of views and he is currently working on a scientific project, but this of course is merely a formal correction. If the adviser to the foreign minister is working on a scientific project, then he should be doing that and not organizing press conferences. So, what’s the point of all this?
Everyone knows that even people with a really creative imagination can’t picture the international court of the UN take the 132,000 square kilometers of land and give that to Armenia as a present. It’s even harder to picture how Armenia is going to sue the shareholders of the “Baku-Jeyhan” oil pipeline. If the high-ranking diplomat considers this as “rather realistic”, there are two options in this case: either he believes in what he’s saying (thus, he has nothing to do at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and can prolong his vacation), or he also understands very well that he’s making absurd statements but for some reason, it is necessary for him to say things like that. In the case of the adviser to the foreign minister, I think that the last one is more probable.
But what’s the point of having that kind of a role? Theoretically, there are two possible options. First option: there is no progress in the Karabagh conflict negotiations and it’s quit possible that the international community (through the means of the OSCE Minsk Group) will soon pressure the Armenian authorities. In times like those the Armenian authorities usually threaten by counterattacking. For example, they announce that they will no longer lead the negotiations, they will recognize the independence of the Republic of Nagorno Karabagh, etc. Ara Papyan’s announcements can be looked at as a hint-the possible counterattacks of Armenia in case of pressure. In other words, “if you continue to pressure the Armenian side and observe the issue based on the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan, we will move the issue from the political level to the legal level, we’ll apply to court instances and prolong the process of resolving the conflict.” This option, however, is not that possible because it’s rare to see the international community take those threats seriously. After all, they’re extremely startling to become a topic for negotiations.
The second option is more possible. What was the point of the announcement made by the adviser to the foreign minister? We can formulate that the following way: “We’re not planning on resolving the Karabagh conflict based on today’s international norms. What’s more, we’re not even planning on ameliorating Armenian-Turkish relations and are in favor of making things worse”. This is exactly what Russia wants. Everybody knows that Russia is against the Karabagh conflict resolution because if the status-quo remains, Russia will always have an influence on Armenia and Azerbaijan. Russia is against the improvement of Armenian-Turkish relations because as long as those relations stay tense, there will still be Russian bases allocated in Armenia and Russia will have a “fore post” in the region.
So, what we have is a situation which, if we bring down to simple terms, is the following: The West is doing everything it can to resolve the Karabagh conflict and improve Armenian-Turkish relations (so that Russia can finally get out of the South Caucasus). But Russia doesn’t want the Karabagh conflict to be resolved and wants Armenian-Turkish relations to get worse.
But there is not much time left until the 2008 Armenian presidential elections. As all Armenians know, one of the possible candidates is Minister of Foreign Affairs of Armenia Vartan Oskanyan. He is sending “messages” from Minsk via his adviser, who is currently on vacation working on a scientific project. “I am ready to go along with any policy, which will keep Armenia Russia’s most loyal ally in the region”. It’s understandable that he doesn’t directly announce that “Aghdam is still Armenia’s ally”, but there is a hint that Armenia is ready to move the conflict to the legal level and demand the 162,000 square kilometer area (which of course includes Aghdam).
I don’t think it’s necessary to say how beneficial this policy is for Armenia. If you go deeper into the issue, you see that this is not in the interest of Armenia-but that’s a different story. You get the impression that in this stage, nobody has paid attention to the “minor details”. It seems that a “more important” issue is being solved: who is going to be Russia’s “favorite” in 2008?