Azerbaijani political expert: Armenia acts as a "pawn" in this game

How would you characterize the year 2009 for Azerbaijan?

Starting from major issues such as Azerbaijan’s foreign policy, the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict saw no progress. We are told that a progress in this matter requires the conflicting sides to change positions. I am totally against this opinion. Azerbaijan's position is based on international law and we only require return of our Armenia-occupied territories. So, it is Armenia who should change its position, which, unfortunately, has seen no correction lately.

With regard to the OSCE Minsk Group efforts, they continue verbal "frills", the latest of which was expression of "positive dynamics". They have literally "infected" the conflicting parties with this word. As to intensification in the negotiation process, it seems senseless without a change in positions of the co-chairing countries.

There are no shifts in this context as testified by the U.S. financial aid to the separatist Nagorno-Karabakh. Washington has a double policy, calling the Afghans who fight for their independence terrorists, while not naming the country that have occupied Azerbaijani lands an aggressor.

On the other hand, the time showed that the U.S.-Turkish cooperation, which led to signing of the Armenian-Turkish protocols, also does not benefit Azerbaijan "cooling" the Azerbaijan-Turkey relations. Today one needs to think what will happen in case of warming relations between Tehran and Washington. I think it will not benefit our country at all.

Thus, it turns out that in 2009 there were complications in Azerbaijan’s relations with Turkey, not everything has been all right in relations with Iran for long, relations with the EU remains unclear and Baku has two-fold relations with the United States.

So, 2009 can be characterized as a year of "headaches" for Azerbaijan. Hopefully, Azerbaijani-Turkish relations will be restored in full and bilateral relations between Azerbaijan and the United States will warm finally.

Armenia often warns of complications in settlement of the Karabakh conflict in case it raised to international organizations like the UN. How would you comment on these statements?

These are absolutely incompetent statements. It does not matter how many times the Karabakh issue is raised in international organizations. Resolving this problem depends on the United States and Russia while Armenia is a "pawn" in this game. Armenia’s decisions solve very few issues. Armenians have made their choice by their "feet" by fleeing from their country to anywhere, just not to stay there.

To what extent the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict is likely to be solved next year?

I see no bright prospects in this regard. Azerbaijan will be pushed to accept the Madrid principles which provide a veiled loss of the former Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Region in exchange for five of the occupied regions of Azerbaijan (without Kalbajar and Lachin regions). There is a hypothetical discussion of deployment and percentage of peacekeeping forces in the conflict zone. Although, I think this option is unlikely.

But one must not forget that the Minsk conference discussed withdrawal of Armenian armed forces from Azerbaijani territory,without deployment of international peacekeeping forces and debating status of Karabakh only after that.

All this delays resolution of the Karabakh conflict turning the settlement process into a "long-playing record.”

Z. Ahmadov