Azerbaijan will apply Baltic experience and demand Armenia’s compensation : expert

“Handing over the regions surrounding Nagorno-Karabakh under Azerbaijan's jurisdiction will make implementation of the Baltic model, which is now used with regard to Russia, this time with regard to Armenia, inevitable,” expert on regional development of Baltic Sergey Artyomenko said commenting on political prospects of resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict by making use of European experience realized in the post Soviet area.

Azerbaijan's already shaped political positions unambiguously stipulates that Karabakh and surrounding regions have been occupied by Armenia, he said.

Therefore, with a very high degree of assurance I can say that once occupied areas around Karabakh would be in the hands of Azerbaijan and new authorities will begin develop them, financing of this development will be the first. While these areas are under Armenian control, Azerbaijan intends to involve money of the European Union, but as soon as they fall into the hands of Baku, there will be immediately raised the question of “compensation of damage” caused in those areas according to Baku, he said.

It is no accidental that Baltic authorities, authorities of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia are so active in contacts with Azerbaijan. They have something to share with colleagues: for example, experience of requiring “indemnity for occupation” from Russia, with which they were made it almost as soon as they received their independence from Moscow itself. Therefore, nothing prevents Azerbaijan’s use of Baltic experience in regard to Armenia, to begin to calculate the damage and require “indemnity for the occupation” of these areas and Karabakh itself, where it will have a free hand, the expert said.

/Regnum/