Despite all this, judging from the announcements and discussions regarding the post-Rambouillet Karabagh conflict negotiations, something unique did happen in Rambouillet. Everyone had their own comment. What’s interesting, though, is that besides the conflicting sides, recently there are certain people making comments who have actually been a part of the Karabagh conflict progression. Just a couple of days ago, the first and last president of the USSR Mikhail Gorbachev gave an interview to the “Moscow Comsomolets” newspaper regarding the Karabagh conflict. In response to the question as to whether or not Moscow could have demanded that Azerbaijan give autonomy to Karabagh without being linked to Armenia, Gorbachev said that Moscow was even ready to provide 1 billion rubles for the 180 thousand population of Karabagh. It was also ready to force Baku to give back all the accounts, strengthen ties with Armenia and give Karabagh the right to be autonomous.
“However, at the time, Karabagh was declared an inseparable part of Armenia during Armenia’s Supreme Council (SC) session. What was I supposed to do-allocate military bases in Armenia? I think that it was justified for Karabagh to be excluded from Azerbaijan,” said M. Gorbachev and added that compromises could only be made with the USSR.
“Applying force would not lead to a positive outcome. Did you see what happened in Chechnya?” said the first and last president of the USSR. In regard to the allocation of forces in Tbilisi, Vilnius and Baku during his presidency, Gorbachev said that he had only allocated forces in Baku.
“Even today, I say that allocating the forces there saved us a lot,” said Mikhail Gorbachev.
First president of Azerbaijan Ayaz Mutalibov also expressed his opinion on the Karabagh conflict during his interview with “Regnum”. According to him, it is necessary to change the format of the conflict negotiations and reach a political solution, which will fix the relations between Baku and Stepanakert.
“Whether we like it or not, we have to admit that Karabagh is the main reason for the tension that started way back in February 1988. If we are talking about territorial integrity, then we had to consider all the events that took place in the countries of the region respectively,” said the first president of Azerbaijan and went further into detail about what he meant by “respectively”.
“Azerbaijan has been leading all negotiations with Armenia for the past couple of years. Why? Is it doing this because it has been aggressive towards Azerbaijan? Armenia doesn’t want to accept Karabagh as a participant, in other words, Karabagh doesn’t have to take on the responsibility of leading negotiations since it hasn’t even declared war on Azerbaijan,” says A. Mutalibov. He has also raised the issue of whether or not today’s negotiations format means that autonomous Karabagh will be linked to Armenia. According to the first president of Azerbaijan, Baku is left in the middle of the conflict and pushes Karabagh and Yerevan around.
“Nagorno Karabagh is a part of our territory and the residents are formally citizens of Azerbaijan. Karabagh is not internationally recognized as a state. That is why I don’t share the opinion that Karabagh doesn’t participate in the negotiations for Baku just because it may consider itself autonomous as a result,” said Mutalibov. He also stated that the word “unrecognized state” is stated in all the protocols and documents of the negotiations and Azerbaijan’s desire to keep Karabagh a part of the territory seems kind of extraordinary.
“So, we are basically leading negotiations with “strangers”, which at any given point can say that the conflict doesn’t interest us, so go and talk with Karabagh,” said A. Mutalibov. According to Mutalibov, Azerbaijan is talking about the guarantee for long-term peace as if it is dealing with an abstract subject.
“In that case, which resident of Karabagh will believe us when we say over and over that Azerbaijan only wants to lead negotiations with Armenia?” asks A. Mutalibov.