Sir Brian Fall visited Yerevan on May 13-15 and had meetings with Armenian President, Foreign and Defense Ministers, other officials and NGO members. On May 14 he spoke with Mediamax correspondent.
– What is your assessment of internal political situation in Armenia on the eve of Yerevan Mayor’s election due on May 31, which the opposition has already described as the “second round” of last year’s presidential election?
– We see a lively political debate, which is good. The upcoming elections for the Mayor of the major city are not national political elections, but as the national parties are involved, they are important elections. We would like to see them conducted according to the best international standards. I think it is important for Armenia that, if it is difficult immediately to score a 100%, there should be a real sense of progress from one election to the next, so we would hope that this could be open and fair elections. We hope that there would be lessons learned from the previous experience and that we will see a hotly contested, but peacefully contested election.
– Do you believe that if the opposition will be represented in the city parliament, this can become a start for the dialogue between the Armenian authorities and the opposition?
– I think that is a question for Armenians to decide, not for visitors to decide. There are political systems, including the British one, based on “winner takes all”, and there are systems much more in kind of coalitional or proportional representation. One is not necessarily better or worse than the other. Surely, the opposition has an important role to play in any city or national government, whether as part of the coalition, or whether as part of what we would call in Britain the loyal opposition, which means loyal to the Queen, not to the government. And I think it’s very much for Armenia to decide where in the spectrum of democratic possibilities is the best for Armenia.
– The mediators have definite hopes that the meeting between Armenian and Azerbaijani Presidents, due in June in Saint Petersburg, may become a “breakthrough”. Do you share that optimism?
– I am an optimist. And a good friend of mine is perhaps the most optimistic of the three co-chairs. Let’s hope that this year there will be all the possibilities that they are. But it has been very frustrating over the last two or three years – people walked almost to the top of the hill and then it has gone down again. And we need that extra push and we hope very much that that push will be forthcoming on this occasion. The responsibility is primarily on the two Presidents, but the Co-chairs need to show that they act on behalf of the international community.
There are some people who say that the form is wrong and that it should be done some other way. We don’t agree with that. We think that the co-chairs are doing a good job and that the two Presidents have the opportunity to rise to a very important challenge and really reach out now and find a common ground. So we hope for the best.
– Do you believe that Turkey has really renounced the policy of preconditions and that Armenian-Turkish relations may be regulated in reasonable timeframe?
– There is an agreement between the Turkish and the Armenian governments. And there is a timetable for the next steps, which we hope will be followed. The scenes, judging by the press reports from Baku [Brian Fall means the press coverage of the visit of Turkish Prime Minister to Baku on May 13-Mediamax], to these differences of interpretation, we have an English expression “a storm in a teacup”, and I hope that it will turn out to be that: nothing more fundamentally important. But I think we’ll obviously need now to renew contacts between the sides. I have not seen the text of the agreement, I don’t know if anybody is accusing anybody of going outside the agreement. That will be in the first place with the two sides, and from outside there has been help, and the Swiss government was involved in the past. That may be necessary.
We welcome what we have heard about the agreement. We want to see an improvement in Turkish-Armenian relation. It would be nice to have the border opening, it would be nice to have bilateral talking on a number of difficult points, and at the same time we need to make sure that we get this very serious, potentially very serious dispute over Nagorno-Karabakh peacefully resolved, because it has the potential to grow to a great real problem.
– There are opinions voiced that normalization of Armenian-Turkish relations will change the entire geopolitical situation in the South Caucasus. Are you of the same opinion?
– The context of the moment is abnormal because there are lots of issues: many difficulties between Armenia and Turkey, difficulties between Armenia and Azerbaijan, differences between Russia and Georgia. It is difficult to envisage. The three countries of the South Caucasus working together as members of a very important region, that would be to economic and social benefit of the people who live in those three countries. And that is what we would very much like to see. If the border is opened, this will be a green light and a very positive signal psychologically. So we hope very much that that goes ahead.
– We always heard that this region of the South Caucasus has always been a place where the interests of great powers were always clashing. But today, looking at these processes of Nagorno-Karabakh peace settlement and Armenian-Turkish dialogue, we see that the United States, Russia and the EU approach them from the same positions. What was the reason for such good cooperation among the great powers?
– Certainly, the co-chairs work together effectively. But the co-chairs are not the most senior political officials in their respective countries. I think that there is Russian interest in seeing a peaceful settlement, which is exactly what the Western powers would like to see. Settlement of Nagorno-Karabakh would have implications for Russian involvement with Armenia for a longer term. There would most certainly have to be international at least peace observation mission to make it sure that the territories from which Armenia withdrew will not become militarized and used against Nagorno-Karabakh. So there will be an international role there and agreement will have to be made on precisely how that should be done. In the old days people said “no co-chairs, no neighbors” [Means that peacekeepers should not represent U.S., Russia, France, or Turkey-Mediamax]. Now, maybe that is still the right formula. But we don’t know whether the Russians are committed to it. We don’t know whether U.S.-Russian relations in the new U.S. Administration are really going to build on the “reset” button. If they do we will be very happy. And I think the effect on the region here will be to see cooperation where previously there was a sense of zero sum game. So, let’s hope that the things that are encouraging now will look the same by the end of the year.
– In political circles of Armenia there is an opinion, according to which Great Britain does not have any special interests in Armenia, especially if we draw parallels with Azerbaijan. How justified is this opinion and do you see opportunities for deepening Armenian-British relations?
– I think people underestimate what is happening here – we have active British Council programs, we have Chevening scholars, John Smith Fellowships, etc. There is some tendency in Armenia to say that that if we have chocolate cake in Baku, there should be chocolate cake in Yerevan as well. But you can’t do that. For instance, Britain’s relations with the Netherlands and with Belgium are both very close. But nobody says why you don’t have three of these in Netherlands and only one in Belgium. What’s wrong? That’s not the way relations develop.
We have economical-commercial interests in Azerbaijan for obvious geological reasons. We are I think the major foreign investors in Azerbaijan, it’s a huge commitment which brings in it the active involvement of lot of British Companies. And of course, it matters how full the plane is and how often it flies. But this isn’t something that Armenia should see as a sign that we politically are favoring one party against another. In a non-governmental way, the people on the plane aren’t there because the British government put them on the plane, they are there to make some money, and as relations develop, business, economic, cultural, so the plane gets fuller and fuller. But it is much a question of the private sector, and not the government. There is no way that the British government could sign a paper and say next year we will send you more people than we did this year. That is not the way it works. It is understandable that you are close neighbors and you look at each other and say why not me? The answer is that we are trying to develop relations with each of these important countries to the extent that it makes a good sense to our businessmen, to our cultural people. And the net result will be progressively more this year than over the past few years. I have no doubt about it. But it is impossible to conduct relations on the basis of equal slices of a chocolate cake.