COULD MEDIATORS CURTAIL BAKU’S MILITARISM?
Yerkir.am
June 02, 2006
Armenian and Azeri presidents are scheduled to meet on June 4 in
Bucharest on the sidelines of the Black Sea Dialogue and Partnership
Summit. This will be the second meeting of the presidents on Karabakh
conflict this year. The discussion is expected to produce a one-page
‘paper’ on the principles of the conflict settlement.
Armenian FM Vardan Oskanian said that if the parties come to an
agreement the ‘paper’ would become a document. But he ruled out that
the presidents would sing under any document.
In contrast to the Rambouillet meeting earlier this year, there is
no significant activeness this time. Mediators, too, voice just a
cautious optimism.
The statement the Minsk Group co-chairs made in Baku and Yerevan is
vigilant. ” The time has come for the both sides to reach an agreement
about the principles of the conflict settlement,” this was the key
of their statements.
Further, they said that “we are at a stage when mutually favorable
agreement is possible. Whether this is going to happen depends on
Armenia and Azerbaijan.”
This vigilance is apparently due to the uncompromising stance of
Azerbaijan.
Despite Armenia’s willingness to soften its position and announced
it was ready to discuss the consequences of the conflict if Baku
recognized the right of the Karbakh people to self-determination,
Azerbaijan, like before, shows no signs of making even a half-step
towards easing its toughness. Everyone there is waiting for the
international community to deliver everything to them, including
Karabakh. Baku is even threatening to resume the war. But this is
what the mediators don’t have on their minds.
At least, for now. Therefore, the co-chairs, who seem not to have
special illusions of a breakthrough in the forthcoming meeting in
Bucharest, are seeking to get assurances of the conflicting sides
that they would stick to the peaceful plans of the settlement; and
first of all from militarism-driven Azerbaijan. In his congratulatory
message to Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev on Azerbaijan’s Day of
Independence on May 27, US President George W. Bush poi nted out that
he is looking forward to the Azeri president’s continuations to seek
peaceful settlement for the conflict.
The same idea was in French President Jacque Chirac’s message:
“The peaceful settlement of the conflict has no alternative; it is
important to Armenia, Azerbaijan and the entire region,” Chirac said
when meeting with Aliyev in Paris on May 29.