Pashinyan’s press conference yesterday did not deliver the main message: “We recognize Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity and renounce our claims to Karabakh.” You must agree that no peace agenda can move forward without it. That is, he seems to be promising to open the roads, to work on a peace treaty, etc., but he is doing nothing to this end. How, then, should Baku act?
Let us look again at what we have: the problem has to do with the fact that when Pashinyan came to power, he proclaimed the well-known slogan: ‘Separation for the sake of salvation.’ That is, the policy of the Armenian authorities is aimed at separating Nagorno-Karabakh from Azerbaijan. And therefore, in this context, it is naïve, to say the least, to expect Pashinyan to give up his claims to Karabakh. Therefore, we must proceed from the fact that the so-called ‘peace process’, all the more so with the mediators we see, who are far from being peaceful, is nothing more than an attempt to play for time and, as President Ilham Aliyev said yesterday, to wait for some allegedly promised geopolitical changes. This is what it is all about. And so the fact that the main issue was not addressed, but just some vague hints were voiced instead—and we saw a lot of contradictory ideas in Pashinyan’s statements, just like in Mao’s little red book—is not a problem for Pashinyan. This is his signature line.
By the way, President Aliyev said yesterday in an interview with local TV channels that 2023 is the last chance for Yerevan. What do you think the president was hinting at? Do you think that there will be, say, a mini-operation to coerce Yerevan to peace?
First of all, 2022 also was the year of the policy of coercing Yerevan to peace. This includes the use of force in response to provocations, and constant political pressure within the framework of the negotiation process, and so on. All these tactics are not new, and they will continue in 2023. As Ilham Aliyev said, “We are closely monitoring the situation and we are ready to thwart any threat to the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Azerbaijan.” This, of course, also applies to the Karabakh zone and the territory bordering with Armenia. In this context I think that Azerbaijan, through its President, stressed that we are considering all eventualities, and we are preparing for all eventualities.
The President also said that sending another EU mission to Armenia could have a negative impact on the EU-led negotiations, he said that we had essentially been deceived. In this case, the parties are left with two options: to negotiate in Moscow or in Washington. What can you say about the positions and the interest of these countries that seek to mediate between Baku and Yerevan?
I think it was also said that during the negotiations some verbal agreements are also adopted, which Azerbaijan takes seriously, but these agreements are constantly violated. In this case it was voiced2 that the political opponents had lost any credibility in their statements as a result of their actions. And this is a very serious warning to the opponents, because it is absolutely unacceptable when some progress is achieved at negotiations, and then all these agreements change within several days. Moreover, this is characteristic not only of the Armenian political elite, but also of the so-called French “mediation”. This essentially suggests that the European mediation track, which turned out to be under the influence of France, is no longer relevant, and I believe Washington and Moscow are now coming to the forefront.
By the way, Baku has also put forward an agenda for the return of Azerbaijanis to West Azerbaijan. What do you think about this, what risks can we expect, given Yerevan’s intransigence?
I do not imagine that there will be any risks for us, especially since it was stated that we would act in line with international law, including the restoration of the violated rights of those people. Moreover, Azerbaijan through its leader has stressed the monoethnic nature of Armenia, a country some people attempt to portray as “the center of democracy and human rights” in the South Caucasus. I think this is a kind of announcement of how Azerbaijan, using the topic of human rights and democracy, will secure the rights of the Azerbaijanis expelled from there.
Yana Madatova
Translated from Minval.az
