Interview with Andrei Areshev, an expert at Russia's Strategic Culture Foundation.
Q: How do you assess the prospects for a resolution of the Karabakh conflict after Russia's recent mediation efforts seemed to yield no significant results?
A: After the relatively unsuccessful summit in Kazan, Russia has continued its diplomatic activity. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov visited Yerevan and Baku, while the foreign ministers of Azerbaijan and Armenia visited Moscow. Given the absence of reports about the results of these first post-Kazan talks at the level of foreign ministers, no progress was achieved and the presidents needed to be involved to discuss the resolution of the conflict at the highest level, but in the format of individual bilateral meetings with the Russian president.
Q: The presidents of Azerbaijan and Russia met recently, mainly to discuss Karabakh. How do you assess the results of this meeting, considering the information in the media?
A: The presidents of Russia and Azerbaijan did meet and clearly managed to clarify some points from the Kazan meeting and about the Azerbaijani position on a settlement. It was said officially that the dialogue was constructive and lasted quite a long time.
Some observers started to say right after the Kazan meeting that Russia would not give up its mediation efforts and would organize one more trilateral meeting to achieve a breakthrough.
But this optimism does not seem too well grounded to me. However, the fact that negotiations and consultations are continuing is already positive, because in the Nagorno-Karabakh situation, any talks, even endless ones, are better than none. The Russian president made it clear in his recent interview before 8 August, the third anniversary of the tragic August events [Russo-Georgian war], the consequences of which are well-known.
Q: Parallels are often drawn between the events in Georgia and the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict settlement. What are the main differences between these situations?
A: In my opinion, parallels, of course, can be drawn, but only to a certain extent. Of course, every situation - in South Ossetia, Abkhazia and Nagorno-Karabakh - has its own specifics. I think the similarity of these situations is that the events of 08/08/08 began to develop according to a scenario that was obviously not the one intended by those who started this reckless scheme or pushed it in one way or another.
There is more and more evidence that it was Georgia and Georgian politicians who held high office at that time who initiated this. We are free to read all their statements on various news websites.
It seems to me that in the event of renewed hostilities in Karabakh, events may evolve in an equally unexpected fashion and not in accordance with any planned scenario. It seems this is the main lesson to be learned from these events.
F.H.
News.Az
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