Interview with Mamuka Areshidze, chairman of the Caucasus Centre of Strategic Research.
Q: The Russian leadership says it is interested in stabilizing the situation in the Caucasus, including the South Caucasus. Will Moscow be successful in this?
A: There are probably people in the Russian leadership who really want the stabilization in the Caucasus and want to play a decisive role here. But the situation is paradoxical. Moscow’s policy on the North and South Caucasus is so wrong and careless that it is unable to get rid of the problems it has created itself. In this respect, it is very difficult for Moscow to hold a deliberate, consistent policy in stabilizing the overall situation in the Caucasus.
What’s going on in the Caucasus? Doesn’t Moscow know that control of the region by force and through corrupted clans has been exhausted? They could have created a plan for the economic development of the Caucasus, but a terror attack occurred in Kabardino-Balkaria on 18 February and Khloponin [the Russian president's envoy for the North Caucasus] ordered that the whole tourism season be closed. How do people near Elbrus live? They live on tourism. It means these people will go hungry, which will increase public outrage.
I want to say that they cannot hold the economic policy they have created.
Q: Russia is active on a Karabakh settlement as well. What are the prospects for this conflict?
A: It's the same with Karabakh. Russia does not want anyone to shove it back and take its place in the resolution of this conflict. It wants to be the only leader, but it fails.
Instead of Russia, I would give the responsibility to other players, including the EU and US.
Q: The presidents of Azerbaijan and Armenia will meet in Sochi on 5 March on the initiative of Dmitriy Medvedev.
A: If no breakthrough is achieved on 5 March, if even a small step is not taken so that Yerevan and Baku feel that they have preserved their image and got certain dividends, Russia will just drop out of the list of countries influencing the solution to this conflict. Russia will turn into a secondary state, which just takes part in the Minsk Group. I feel these sentiments in Baku and Yerevan, but especially in Baku.
Why does it take place? It is all because, as I have already mentioned, Moscow has created a virtual hypothetical situation which they have been unable to tackle so far.
Q: You said that anger at Moscow’s role is also growing in Yerevan. Isn't Yerevan not satisfied with the status quo?
A: But how long can this status quo be preserved? Yerevan feels that some movements are needed. The Armenian authorities are not comfortable, they feel pressure from below, from the opposition and nationalistically inspired circles and from the diaspora. They are ready to make some steps; the Armenian public is also ready to a certain extent.
I do not say that they are ready to return Karabakh at once; this is ruled out at present. But people in Yerevan want to make some steps, create a format, a format of peace so that everyone can feel stability. People in Yerevan are fed up that their country is excluded from all economic projects of regional concern. It is certainly unpleasant for them that the Armenian-Turkish negotiations have failed. However, the only positive against the background of these failed negotiations is that the small countries, Azerbaijan and Armenia, started to show their will to the superpowers. This is the only plus. Meanwhile, all the rest is an unfavourable situation, since in the sense of economic development Armenia is in a worse position than other countries of the region.
You say that Armenians want to preserve the status quo. Naturally, they want to preserve the status quo in relation to Karabakh. But on the whole, they certainly do not want to preserve the status quo in the economic, political sense, in terms of isolation from regional projects. This is interconnected.
Leyla Tagiyeva
News.Az
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