Today, a regular trilateral meeting between the Presidents of Armenia, Azerbaijan and Russia will take place in Sochi. On the threshold of the meeting experts affirmed that during the meeting interesting developments are expected. They also made quite interesting predictions. The interesting thing, for example, was the comment of one of the Russian experts, who claimed that “in the Olympic Sochi it is not the interest of Russia to create a spot of tension.” The author of this statement was Felix Stanevsky, the head of the South Caucasus department at CIS states institute, who named the upcoming meeting quote essential and symbolic. According to Stanevsky, the countries have difference scenarios for resolution of a territorial dispute. “The parties do not want to compromise. Which is natural, as the majority of current Armenian politicians fought for Karabakh in 1989-1994, which makes it a personal issue for them,” he said. Stanevsky believes the conflict will be inevitable if the negotiating parties make no headway. The success of Arabic revolution can trigger some progress, the expert believes. “Conflict will be inevitable if negotiating parties make no headway on Karabakh issue. The aim of March 5 negotiations is to create an atmosphere for a dialogue,” he believes. Over the last 3 years, Armenia and Azerbaijan have been increasing their military power. Even protracted negotiation process prevents the situation around Karabakh from serious deterioration, the Chairman of Federation Council Committee for CIS Affairs stated. He also added that Azerbaijan is providing 3,1 billion USD to the army and Armenia allots 390 million USD. Indeed, Russia wouldn’t wish to create any state of war or tension in NKR closer to the Olympiad. The same situation was also in summer 2008 when the Russian-Georgian conflict started and the short Russian-Georgian war cast a shadow on the sport games taking place in Sochi. But this is the second part of the issue. The primary thing is that the experts think that the threat of resumption of war has grown. Of course, in Armenia they may ignore the opinions of the Russian experts but we shouldn’t forget that in Russia they are the ones that express the state standpoint of the elite. And so it is not excluded that the meeting will create a certain conclusion. Let us recall that in the beginning of December of the last year, after the statement made in Astana in the framework of the OSCE summit, this is the first meeting of the presidents of Russia and Armenia. And the declaration signed by five parties in Astana read, “The co-chairs of the Minsk Group expressed their consent to support the presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan in order to bring the process to peaceful resolution.” On these days an opinion prevails, according to which Medvedev will try to influence on the parties to sign some statement or memorandum on peaceful resolution of the conflict. U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs Philip Gordon has said that both U.S. and Russia supports the basic principles for resolution of the Nagorno Karabakh conflict proposed by the Co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group. Commenting on opinion that Russia is gaining control over the process, Mr. Gordon noted that Russia is geographically close to the conflict zone, so it faces fewer difficulties in organizing meetings between Armenian and Azerbaijani leaders. “Russia acts transparently in Karabakh process while the Co-chairs defend common interests to ensure security in Europe,” he said. According to him, the U.S. thinks that the OSCE Minsk Group does a good job and exerts huge efforts to overcome the discrepancies between the parties to the conflict. At any rate, what expectations are there concerning the upcoming meeting in Armenia? “It would be a positive motive if the sides started to speak about the same thing,” says Kiro Manoyan, head of the ARF Bureau’s Hay Dat. Let us remember that Azerbaijan has always said that it accepts this version. Armenia was denying that. The spokesman of the Republican Party Edward Sharmazanov insists that the important thing for the Armenian side is the status. The latter, however, doesn’t expect a major shift from today’s meeting. “I have always said that the issue should be exceptionally solved in a peaceful way. The progress should be that the sides should start to sign a memo on refusing to use military methods for the conflict resolution. As in practice Azerbaijan is not ready for constructive steps we cannot expect serious steps. At any rate, for us negotiating is better than not. In this regard the attitude of the west and the co-chairs of the Minsk Group match with the standpoint of Armenia. The problem is with Azerbaijan,” says Sharmazanov. Gordon has also spoken about the Armenian-Turkish relations and said, “Normalization of Armenian-Turkish relations should not be bound to other problems. The US doesn’t share Ankara’s opinion that reconciliation between Turkey and Armenia can take place only in case progress is fixed in the Nagorno Karabakh conflict settlement talks.” “The U.S. believes that the sides should continue with ratification of the protocols,” he said, voicing regret that the normalization process has been suspended. Manoyan thinks that the US has promised to Turkey that Armenia will give up the liberated territories despite the fact that there is nothing about that in the Turkish-Armenian protocols. Several months ago there was informational outflow, according to which if Armenia returns two regions Turkey will open the border. And Manoyan thinks that such outflows are aimed at pressuring the Armenian side. And the ANC coordinator Levon Zurabyan thinks that the US doesn’t have any objective to link the Turkish-Armenian relations with the NKR conflict resolution. “But we have always warned the Armenian government that the US has an opportunity to change the attitude of Turkey in that regard. The US currently has serious issues in the Middle East besides that they are already involved in the war with Iraq and Afghanistan. Now new challenges have been created due to the revolutions in the Arabic world. And Turkey as a strategic partner is necessary like water for the US,” says Zurabyan.
