AzerNews, Azerbaijan
July 25 2014
Burning issues forces Nagorno-Karabakh conflict on back burner for U.S.
25 July 2014, 18:01 (GMT+05:00)
By Claude Salhani, Senior editor of the English service of Trend Agency
There is a need to renew efforts to resolve the Nagorno-Karabakh
conflict once and for all, said US ambassador to Azerbaijan, Richard
Morningstar, at a farewell event on July, 24, in Baku.
Words well spoken, indeed. But are they backed up?
All parties concerned are in favor of finding a resolution to this
thorn in the side of the Caucasus – a situation of no war and no peace
– that is placing the region in eternal limbo.
“Peace would bring substantial benefits to people across the region
and ensure Azerbaijan’s prosperity into the future,” said the American
diplomat.
Indeed, peace, naturally, would be beneficial for Azerbaijan, of that
there is no doubt. The country is doing quite well on the economic
front, and revenues from oil and natural gas are being well invested,
a detail that did not escape the attention of French President
Francois Hollande during his trip to Baku about a month ago.
During a meeting with the French community in a downtown hotel, Mr.
Hollande praised Azerbaijan and its president, Ilham Aliyev, for
investing wisely in the country by developing its infrastructure.
If anyone one side might be opposed to a settlement of the problem it
must be the Armenians. Why? Because a settlement, in so far as the
Azerbaijanis are concerned, can only mean the return of their land, a
solution that Armenia will certainly oppose, as they will come out of
this agreement minus the land they began to capture in 1992.
But this is why the talks are complicated because this is not an
all-sum game. These are negotiations in which each side will have to
make concessions. For Armenia it may mean having to give up land in
exchange for peace with its neighbor, and improve relations with other
Turkic-speaking countries who support Azerbaijan.
Such as Turkey, a major player in the region.
As mentioned above, this is a negotiation in which every side will
need to cede something. In Azerbaijan’s case they can offer Armenia
two things: peace and financial incentives. The first will create
trade and tourism–and all the jobs associated with the
industry–between the two South Caucasus countries and the second will
help Armenia, which is currently in dire economic straits.
The two member countries of the Minsk Group, the United States and
France, two countries with large Armenian communities, can offer
Yerevan financial support and security guarantees. This will render
Armenia less dependent on Russian support, which it is wholly and
unhealthily relying upon at the moment for just about everything.
But before we even venture into that domain, there would be the need
to bring the two parties together at the presidential level in order
to get the ball rolling, at least in the first set of meetings.
However, Ambassador Morningstar’s bosses in Washington, the folks on
Pennsylvania Avenue as well as those at Foggy Bottom are currently
preoccupied with far more burning issues — quite literally burning —
in the Middle East and Eastern Europe.
In Iraq the Maleki government is fighting for its life as Islamists
from the group calling itself the Islamic Caliphate are edging closer
to the capital Baghdad every day.
The leitmotif for much of the violence in the Middle East, the
conflict opposing Palestinians and Israelis is turning tragic with
Gaza now under severe bombardment for 17 days. The death toll keeps
mounting, according the respected daily newspaper Haaretz more than
770 Palestinians have been killed and 32 Israeli soldiers have lost
their lives in the fighting.
Not to mention the civil war raging in Syria, the precariousness of
the political situation on Libya, the nuclear talks with Iran and the
civil war in Ukraine between pro-Russian separatists and
pro-government troops, with the severe consequences that have resulted
such as the downing of the Malaysian Airways jet.
It goes without saying that the conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh comes
pretty low on the US diplomatic totem pole.
U.S. diplomats in Baku told Trend that there was “nothing really new”
in the ambassador’s speech. No new policy, no new initiative. But the
ambassador was reiterating the U.S. position on the issue. In other
words it was really more of the same. A diplomat’s going away speech,
as it should be; polite, concise and without much meat on the bones.
It is understandable that with the clock running out on the
ambassador’s tenure in Baku (he leaves next week), there is little
that he can accomplish other that to leave the Azerbaijani people with
a little hope for a just resolution of the conflict.