Two days ago it became clear that during the recent visit of the Russian president Dmitri Medvedev to Azerbaijan the Gazprom company of Russia and the state oil company of Azerbaijan executed an agreement, according to which Russia will buy 500 million cubic meter of gas from Azerbaijan every year and will pay a significantly higher price – 350$.
Does this mean that the plans of building the Nabucco pipeline, which is sponsored by the West and does not cross the territory of Russia, is jeopardized? What will change this contract in the process of Karabakh conflict settlement? Armenian politicians have quite different opinions concerning this issue. MP and political scientist Stepan Safaryan thinks that the process of looking for new routes of the pipeline started far in the beginning of 2008. “Azerbaijan used the fact that everyone was waiting to see its policy and decision and put the issue of Karabakh on the table, which in fact means that Azerbaijan will give the gas to the one who solves the problem of Karabakh. The first step was made by the Russian president, who led a huge delegation and visited Azerbaijan,” says Stepan Safaryan. He says that during that visit it was expected that the parties would sign a contract on selling all the gas to Russia, which was not done but Aliyev made an announcement that he had given an instruction to make an agreement package on the new route. “This was followed by the visit of Dick Chaney, which was failed because the president of Azerbaijan did not accept him. Later during the energetic forum of Baku in participation of European high rank officials they managed to make Azerbaijan sign a resolution, according to which the Nabucco and a number of other projects had to be implemented. Shortly surprisingly the West came up with an initiative to activate the process of Karabakh conflict settlement and Armenian-Turkish relations. The next step was that they signed a statement on building the Nabucco. In that phase the Middle East countries had not joined that project yet,” said Mr Safaryan. He says that the visit of the Georgian president to Armenia should be viewed in this context as well. “The Armenian government realized that the process was going against Karabakh and Armenia, demonstratively invited the Georgian president to Armenia and gave him a medal, and through the experts who are directed by the president announced that Sargsyan had done it in order to help Georgia go out of the international blockade supported by Russia. This was followed by the Russian MPs’ harsh critics, who called this step as a demarche. On the other hand, our government is trying to resist these processes through civic disobedience and anti-Azerbaijani hysteria in order to fail the negotiations,” said Safaryan.
Ex head of the NA standing committee on foreign affairs Hovhannes Hovhannisyan says that through this agreement Russia is trying to fail the Nabucco project. “If the Russian-American relations worsen much to the extent when Azerbaijan will have to make a choice between Russia and the West, there will be problems for the Nabucco, but I don’t think Russia will be able to fail this project through such primitive methods.” The problem is that Armenia is losing its weight as a political factor. The fact that Aliyev is linking the gas and oil with the issue of Karabakh (by the way, recently they found huge reserves) makes the issue of Karakakh secondary. This becomes a secondary issue out of the flow of processes and if they need much they may solve this problem fast in order not to spoil the relations with Azerbaijan,” says Mr. Hovhannisyan. Another ex head of the NA standing committee on foreign relations Hovhannes Igityan thinks that the issue of Karabakh from one side and the issue of the Nabucco project and Azeri oil on the other side are interconnected. “From the very beginning the Russian official bodies announced that Medvedev was going to Baku to discuss the issue of Karabakh. But when he was in Baku the main issue was the Azeri gas,” he said. According to Mr. Igityan, the 0.5 billion cubic meter gas, which Russia wants to buy per year, is a very small capacity in order to fail the project of Nabucco. “I think Russia was expecting bigger capacities, for example, it was ready to buy Shah-Deniz mine, from where it could import 10-15 billion cubic meter of gas every year. Certainly they said that they would increase the capacities but later it turned out that no legal documents had been signed for that purpose and Aliyev had promised that Russia would be a privileged client among the potential buyers,” he said.
Politician Stepan Grigoryan says that this agreement of Russia and Azerbaijan is not a strategic one. “It is clear that Azerbaijan has turned with the face to the West, and these are mere strategic steps on part of Azerbaijan to try to get Karabakh instead of oil. As it will not be able to realize this goal in the near future, I believe Azerbaijan will return to its policy and Azerbaijan will become the most active participant of the Nabucco,” assures Mr Grigoryan. He believes that this agreement shows that temporarily the interests of Russia and Azerbaijan are the same. “And these two countries are trying to repeat what they did in 1921, when Nakhijevan and Karabakh was given to Azerbaijan against kerosene. Now times have changed and the systems are different as well, the other factors prevail now, Armenia and Karabakh are not the same as that time because we have an army, plus the factors of the US and EU are strong too. Such primitive trade will not work. Yes, they successfully signed the agreement on selling the gas to Russia but now Azerbaijan will have to wait and see whether Russia will be able to take Karabakh from Armenia. Certainly it can’t. I don’t think that the Russian government wants to do that too because they have many other interests in the region as well. Thus, time will pass and it will become clear that Karabakh will stay in its place and won’t be given to Azerbaijan, and Azerbaijan will have to cancel the agreement it has signed,” says Grigoryan, who thinks that the conflict of Karabakh will not be resolved during the coming years because the interests and policies of Russia and the US to this issue are different.