Karabakh in Munich: Moscow Sees Progress in Armenian-Azeri Talks

Moscow deems the current talks to smooth relations between Armenia and Azerbaijan are making progress, according to Russia’s top diplomat.

“We are trying to help Armenians and Azerbaijanis to reach a common approach,” said Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, speaking at the Munich Security Conference on Saturday.

“It is obviously a very difficult issue, but things are moving… The understanding is growing and the number of issues that must be tackled by the top leaders is reducing and we are trying to help,” he added, according to media reports (Monsters and Critics.com).

Late last month Russian President Dmitry Medvedev hosted negotiations between the presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan on Nagorno-Karabakh after which the negotiating parties reportedly signaled common understanding regarding a preamble to what international mediators, Russia, the United States and France, hope would be a framework peace agreement in the protracted Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

Before and after the talks in Sochi, however, officials in Baku have been issuing warnings that Azerbaijan could resort to military force to resolve the conflict unless Yerevan agreed to major concessions on Nagorno-Karabakh. Armenian authorities, meanwhile, have spurned the neighbor’s growing war rhetoric, indicating that Armenian forces are capable of repulsing any military aggression and that any military campaign launched by Baku will end disastrously for the latter. Likewise, officials in Yerevan have urged Turkey to stop linking rapprochement with Armenia with progress in the Nagorno-Karabakh talks.

This war of words and, apparently, a deeper analysis of the general situation in the region led Director of U.S. National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair to state at an open hearing held by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence on February 2 that the situation in the Caucasus could get tense with fighting erupting between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh.

Earlier, Stratfor, a United States-based think-tank, warned that the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict might “get out of control due to increase in the bellicose rhetoric of the Azerbaijani and Armenian presidents.”

Meanwhile, speaking at the Munich conference at the weekend, Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev sought to make a case for his government’s increased pressure on the international community, including the Minsk Group of the OSCE, to get a Nagorno-Karabakh solution promptly.

In his remarks during an energy-related discussion Aliyev said the continuing conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh posed “an essential threat” to regional security and development.

The president of the oil-rich country went on to claim that the presence of Armenian troops in Nagorno-Karabakh in the past two decades has disrupted “full-scale regional cooperation” and may “damage Baku’s future energy-related projects.”

Meanwhile, Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov, also in Munich, reiterated Moscow’s desire to dampen tensions across the entire Caucasus region.

“All the peoples who used to live there for centuries and would continue to live there should do so in peace and cooperation, mixing freely,” he said.

Source: ArmeniaNow - Original Article

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