When people are speaking of Hillary Clinton’s visit to the region and hope that something may change in the issue of Karabakh conflict and Armenia-Turkey relations, they should not forget that it is a long time that there are more effective methods of solving regional issues rather than regional visits. Thus, Clinton’s visit to Azerbaijan and Armenia first of all has an introductory character rather than an attempt to solve concrete issues. This visit is different than the visits to Ukraine and Georgia, which seem to be more precise and official. The visit to Armenia and Azerbaijan will enable the US to legalize the decisions and recommendations, which will be suggested to the parties or obligated.
Several people wrote letters to Hillary Clinton. Specifically, human rights defender Vardan Harutyunyan asked her to be careful and not to cut deals with the government. He wrote a couple of words about the human rights situation in Armenia too. “Sargis Tkhrouni” youth organization is asking the state secretary not to be governed by dual standards in the issue of Karabakh and Kosovo. They also blame the OSCE co-chairs of the failure to give an adequate response to the bloody break of the ceasefire on part of Azerbaijan on June 18. Usually the US does not care about such honest opinions on foreign policy. Also, the US has an Embassy in Armenia, which is stronger than the Bastille and more confidential than the National security services and it collects the necessary information and sends it to them. And this information is not sent in letters.
For ordinary Armenians the visit of this high rank official is more a ceremony and it has the same meaning for them as it would be like when Naomi Camble visited Armenia. The difference is only a small detail, which means that if Naomi Camble visited Armenia, people would not care about if she would visit the Genocide memorial museum and would plant a tree at the memorial or no. We asked the president’s press department whether such thing is included in the agenda of the state secretary’s visit and they informed that they were still agreeing the details of the state secretary’s visit with her staff. They said they did not know anything yet.
It is a very interesting fact that the women state secretaries are very unique people not as officials but as persons with their interesting character. Both Madeleine Albright and Condoleezza Rice were like that. The latter used to use her beautiful legs to stray the attention of people from the main topic of conversation. Hillary Clinton looks like a very gentle but dedicated person. In the past she openly forgave his husband for spending time with Monica Lewinski. In a book she wrote that she learnt about that later and she was the last person to know that. As all the women, when she learnt about his husband’s relations with Monica, she wanted to ”break the head of his husband” but after thinking twice about the benefits and losses she decided to refrain from public scandals. As you see, the results did not come late.
Of course this issue has a psychological meaning for the Armenian president, foreign affairs minister or other officials who want to shake the hand of the US state secretary or see her gentle smile. The officials would feel proud for that if the state secretary would cross this long distance for the purpose of meeting them only. However, yesterday she was in Ukraine. There Hillary Clinton met with not only the government but the opposition leader Youlia Timoshenko as well. Will our opposition meet with the state secretary? It is not excluded that the authorities may represent the ARF as the core opposition and ask the leader of the Dashnaks Vahan Hovhannisyan to grant a couple of good moments to the state secretary with his sharp and funny ideas about the government.
It seems they are not planning a meeting with the ANC. But the experience shows that it was possible to organize such meeting and the ANC would be smart to organize a rally in the Republic Square on July 4. No police would ever dare to prevent such rallies. It is not excluded that Clinton would take part in it too and join the demands to release the political prisoners. Such precedent was the international convention of human rights defenders, when the human rights defenders joined the opposition demonstrations to support the political prisoners. However the active demonstrations of the oppositions finished as soon as the human rights defenders left.
The visit of the state secretary to Armenia should not be exaggerated. However we should confess that a politician is visiting Armenia, who is very famous in the US and the entire world with her biography, whose gentle and diplomatic appearance and behavior makes the officials relate to her with respect, or at least try several ties on before meeting her.
P.S. By the way, on July 31 Hillary Clinton’s daughter Chalsey is getting married and her husband is an ordinary official of a bank.