Mikhail Gorbachev says that it was justified for Karabagh to be separated from Azerbaijan back then, but he doesn’t say why and to whom he was giving one million dollars instead of separating Karabagh.
One of the former presidents of Azerbaijan Ayaz Mutalibov blames his compatriots, better yet his successors for not directly negotiating with Karabagh. He is worried that Azerbaijan will not be able to coexist with the people of Karabagh in the future if it doesn’t want to negotiate the conflict with them today.
The present-day president of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliev says that if it’s over, it’s over. In other words, he is preparing the residents of the Banovshalar village of the Aghdam region for war pointing out the fact that his country’s budget will double as a result of war.
While discussing issues with three journalists, who can almost be considered state officials, president of Armenia Robert Kocharyan makes a startling announcement: if that’s the way it has to be, then so be it. This means that if Azerbaijan continues to delay the conflict negotiation process, then Armenia will officially recognize Karabagh’s independence.
The European Union, in turn, is calling on both sides to prepare the people of each country respectively to get ready for a peace settlement.
As for the American co-chairman of the OSCE Minsk Group Steven Mann, he says that the people’s wish is much more important.
We see and hear about this every single day. Every single day we try to understand what is really going on. Let’s analyze these “flowers that I picked out” from last week’s news. The participants of the Karabagh conflict could probably help us get a full understanding of what is actually going on with the whole “Rambeau” process, which can also known as the conflict zone.
If we start from the end, we will not know how the first and last president of the former Soviet Union came into play. Why did he remember all of a sudden that it was just for Karabagh to separate itself from Azerbaijan? Doesn’t this sound just like the other “flower” that I picked, you know, the announcement made by Steven Mann when he said that the people’s wish is much more important? Doesn’t Gorbachev mean Karabagh’s right to get autonomy when he says justified? Doesn’t Steven Mann realize that his reference to the people’s wish has to do with the antagonistic autonomy and territorial integrity which have been prolonged for the past eighteen years?
Since when did Gorbachev’s clone-the last Communist leader and first president of Azerbaijan-come on to the scene? What is he trying to say to his Azerbaijani compatriots? Is he trying to start a dialogue with the people? But after all, he was the one that missed out on that opportunity and partly lost Karabagh. Among other losses, including the loss of Armenian territories where Azerbaijani used to live, doesn’t the former president realize that Azerbaijan has lost more than it imagined by not giving Karabagh autonomy? Do they at least realize how much they have lost by organizing a systematic exile of the “Armenian hostages” during the years of 1988-90?
Of course, Ilham Aliev feels pain and suffering for the losses and that is why he made a trip all the way to the Banovshalar village of the Aghdam region just to prepare the people for a war, when we are living in an era when you can make contact through informational technologies. Could it be that Ilham Aliev thinks that the people will believe in a war if it is declared right on the conflict border? I would like to believe that Aliev has not applied IT methods in order to directly look in the eyes of his compatriots and feel the demand for his declarations.
It is clear that the fame and glorious victory were not what made Robert Kocharyan announce to journalists close to being state officials that Armenia will officially recognize Karabagh’s independence if necessary. Of course, it was the journalists’ judgment and responsibility for their actions that kept them from reminding the president that the conflict is not starting out back in March 1988, but rather it is March 2006.
In his interview, Gorbachev said that he wanted to give Karabagh a high autonomy and one billion rubles, but he couldn’t because the former Soviet Armenia decided to recognize Karabagh as an inseparable part of Armenia.
“What could I do? Was I going to allocate forces in Armenia?” asks the father of perestroika.
Eighteen years have passed after Gorbachev made that announcement. Now, after eighteen years, will Bush, Chirac or Putin talk about whether or not it is allowed to allocate forces, or will they be more decisive than Gorbachev was?
I think we covered almost everything, except the announcement made by the European Union. We could circumvent this one if, of course, it didn’t make a call out to the people to get ready for a peace settlement. What does the European Union understand by preparing? How do they picture that when they “intend on continuing the negotiations between the two presidents” and then declare that there is not enough time for that, at the same time? Do they mean working with people who don’t know which way to turn after the war, the killings, blood-shed and personal losses, or teaching a lesson with the title “Political Map of the Conflict”?