No excuse

05/11/2008

On November 2 there will be a trilateral meeting in participation of the presidents of Armenia, Azerbaijan and Russia in Moscow. This was announced by the press services of the Kremlin and the Armenian president’s spokesperson.

“There is an arrangement that on November 2 there will be a meeting between the presidents of the Republic of Azerbaijan and the Republic of Armenia in Moscow, the president of Russia Dmitry Medvedev will take part in the meeting as well,” writers the press department of the Russian president. Dmitry Medvedev announced about his intention to organize such meeting in Moscow during his visit to Yerevan at the end of last week. In a word, Russia neutralized the American initiative to resolve the conflict, which was trying to be done through Turkey. It is hard to forecast what the results of such change of orientation and initiatives could be. However, it is more possible that the Russian president has compromised something to make Aliyev participate in the meeting in Moscow. (To note, in the framework of the Russian project of the conflict settlement the parties are discussing issues concerning allocating Russian peacekeepers in the region but Azerbaijan does not agree with it). However it doesn’t mean that Turkey will refuse to intermediate and suggest “help”. It is not by chance that following the Kremlin’s announcement the Turkish government announced about a meeting of the Armenian and Azerbaijani presidents to take place in Helsinki in the near future. The worst thing in this situation is that the Armenian authorities don’t have any excuse to refuse to participate in those meetings and they have to agree to take part in all meetings that Aliyev agrees to participate in.