US expert Stephen Larrabee: I wouldn’t expect a dramatic breakthrough in Kazan meeting of the presidents

Dr. Stephen Larrabee, Distinguished Chair in European Security at the Washington DC-based RAND Corporation, believes that progress is possible in Kazan during the upcoming meeting between the Azerbaijani and Armenian presidents this month, "but a dramatic breakthrough, is unlikely".

"I think progress toward an agreement on the set of "basic principles” negotiated 5 years ago is possible, but I would not expect a dramatic breakthrough", Mr. Larrabee said in an interview.

"Armenian President] Sarkisian will have to persuade his population that the return of Azeri’s displaced during the six year war will not endanger the Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh; because the framework agreement grants Nagorno-Karabakh an interim self-governing status", he said, reminding, Azerbaijan is not compromising its territorial integrity.

"The OSCE has not been very effective so far, but it is hard to name any organization that would be more effective", the analyst said answering the question about mediator’s role in the negotiation process.

According to him, in Washington, there are no major differences in the approach of the Bush and Obama Administration to the Nagorno-Karabakh issue, "but Obama’s effort to "reset" relations with Russia has led to an improvement of US-Russian relations in several specific areas (missile defense, Afghanistan, Iran)".

Meanwhile, Mr. Larrabee remained skeptical about Russian sincerity over Karabakh issue. "The mediation [over Nagorno-Karabakh] allows Russia to appear sincere and increases its ability to influence the conflict. But what counts are concrete results and so far there have been few results", he said.


/APA/