Sabine Freizer: The signs of agreement on basic principles, which will be signed in Kazan, seem promising

President of Russia Dmitri Medvedev has invited the Armenian and Azerbaijani leaders to the city of Kazan on Friday and expects they will finally put their signatures on a “basic principles” text they have been wrangling over since 2007.

To some, the deal on the table may not seem like much. After all, it would still only mark the start of a process, not its conclusion. But if Medvedev can get them to put ink to paper, it will be a rare and significant step forward in this confrontation and a validation of the Russian leader’s persistence, these thoughts were reflected in the article of Europe program director of the International Crisis Group Sabine Freizer called “A Moment for Peace in the South Caucasus” published in the NewYork Times” newspaper.

Commenting on the Kazan meeting of the presidents, Freizer said that it will be the ninth meeting in the analogical format: “The signs seem promising. In a strongly worded statement issued at the May G-8 summit meeting in Deauville, France, Presidents Obama, Medvedev and Nicolas Sarkozy of France, representing the mediators of the “Minsk Group” charged with settling the dispute, highlighted the Kazan meeting and demanded no further delay. Indeed, time is running out because this autumn campaigning will begin in the region and in the Minsk Group countries for 2012 and 2013 elections, thus complicating matters for some and driving the issue lower on the priority list for others”.

Freizer said that a final settlement would allow some 600,000 internally displaced people to return to their homes and offer a sense of security for the approximately 150,000 people currently living in Nagorno-Karabakh: “It would put an end to fears of a regional war. It is now up to President Serzh Sargsyan of Armenia and Ilham Aliyev of Azerbaijan to decide if war or peace is more threatening”.


/APA/