Top Azeri official warns of new war in Caucasus

Armenia may try to provoke Azerbaijan into a new war in the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh, Azerbaijani Deputy Foreign Minister Araz Azimov has claimed.

“Armenia is interested in war, more so than Azerbaijan. They want to gain further justification of the occupation in Karabakh, so they would be looking for an opportunity to provoke. So war is a possibility but it will only start with a provocation,” Azimov told the Hürriyet Daily News in a recent interview.

The minister also claimed Armenian President Serge Sarkisian would be more interested in war to win back the internal support he has lost in his country. “The opposition is against him, the diaspora is against him – a war against Azerbaijan would give him a chance to mobilize the public by showing Azerbaijan as the enemy,” Azimov said.

“Sarkisian has rejected all the offers of the Minsk Group, he continually rejected the so-called Madrid Principles and has tried to backtrack from previously understood principles, so it seems to me that he created this political environment pushing us to the feeling of tension and war. But we do not want any war, of course,” the deputy foreign minister added.

A flashpoint of the Caucasus, the region known as Nagorno-Karabakh is a constituent part of Azerbaijan that has been occupied by Armenia since the end of 1994. While internationally recognized as Azerbaijani territory, the enclave has declared itself an independent republic but is administered as a de facto part of Armenia.

Solution in Karabakh remains distant

Regarding the Karabakh issue, Azerbaijan is most interested in getting a solution that will provide for the restoration of territorial integrity and the return of most of the population to Karabakh, Azimov said.

“We are flexible on self-governance for the Armenian community within the Azerbaijani territories. But the major factor for a settlement is the return of the Karabakh region to Azerbaijan,” he added. “The focus of Azerbaijan always has been on the creation of self-rule where two communities can live together within the territorial framework of Azerbaijan; this is a compromise solution.”

According to the deputy foreign minister, the Armenian position is extreme. “The political goal of Armenia is separation of Karabakh from Azerbaijan; we will never reconcile with that,” Azimov said, adding that he did not expect to see any solution to the Karabakh issue in the short- or middle-term.

“I need to see concrete movement toward a concrete result,” Azimov said.

‘US and France should be more active in Minsk’

Azimov also criticized the trilateral co-chairmanship by Russia, the United States and France of the Minsk Group of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, or OSCE, which he said has been maintaining the lines very tightly and not allowing any other countries to engage in the process. “We are not happy with the lack of Turkey and Germany in this collaboration,” he said, adding that neither NATO nor the European Union has revealed any strategy in the Southern Caucasus yet.

“We observe the leading position of Russia in the Minsk Group when the U.S. and France, the other partners of the trio, stay behind. The last nine meetings being led by Russian President Dmitry Medvedev is a result of this development,” Azimov said. “We would like to see the U.S. and France become more active to create a balance.”


/Hurriyet Daily News/