By Armen Gevorgyan

The “Sochi round” of talks over the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict is behind – it has passed into the eventful negotiation history. How many rendezvous have been arranged over the last 10-15 years? You cannot list them all: Key West, Paris, Madrid, Lisbon, Minsk, Bishkek. You can call any city on the world map and you will find the traces of Karabakh negotiators and their opposite numbers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). How many settlement schemes have been proposed? More than you can count! But no headway has been made.

The mediators’ lack of imagination can hardly be the reason. They must have tried all the possible ways of resolving the problem – the ways that would not lead back to the starting point, a new war, annihilation of the whole people, but that would allow it to live and develop. But someone dislikes those ways. Someone is trying to impose his own ways by resorting to threats and force, break the people’s will, trying to prove that it is not people’s will, but territorial ownership, that is of importance; that it is not the people that decide where to live, but the territory “decides” where a particular people must live and in what conditions. Someone is seeking to once more pass through the crucible of war!

One thing remains unclear, however: if, 20 years after committing its first blunder, Azerbaijan is going to commit a second, why does its leader take part in all the rounds of peace talks, shaking hands with peace seekers? We can hardly think that the Azerbaijani leader went to Sochi to “do some snowboarding”, knowing everything beforehand!

If not, what is then the sense of Baku’s blasts of propaganda on the threshold of each meeting? Azerbaijani politicians, including the President, hardly hope that a people that gained victory in war can now be afraid of the demagogic statements and let Azerbaijan have the laurels only because of its oil! We can hardly think that Ilham Aliyev is calming himself down by stating that Nagorno-Karabakh will never be independent, but will remain an autonomous region as part of Azerbaijan, whereas he takes quite different positions at top-level talks. That is why one gets the impression that Azerbaijan is doing nothing but blackmailing the peace seekers, talking to them about peace in the language of war. Obviously, when the peace seekers stop taking the threats seriously, Aliyev will have to prove his right to be called President and politician.

Sooner or later the Azeri leader will have to account for the billions spent on weapons and propaganda and show his and his country’s true colors – naked aggression.

The Sochi round is down in history now. Armenia sincerely thanked Russia for her consistent efforts to resolve the problem. Official Yerevan is well aware that the Gordian knot is not in Moscow nor is it in Washington. It is here, in the region. Its name is Panturkism, Panislamism. Armenia and its people are in hostile surroundings. You cannot conduct a dialogue with your enemy – especially with such one — if you are weak. Hardly anything has changed in this region over the last 100 years. Turkey is seeking to join the European family, while massacring Kurds in its own territory and blocking other sovereign states’ borders. “Democratic” Azerbaijan, where the son inherits power from the father, is violating another nation’s rights. Both Azerbaijan and Turkey, their total population being 80 million, call 3-million-strong Armenia an aggressor that occupied other territories. But whose territories are they? Are they not Armenian territories if we view the reality in the light of historical truth?

While expressing its gratitude to Russia and United States, Switzerland and France for their efforts, Armenia should at the same time expect a foul stab in the back at any moment. Hardly anything has changed in the region…

T.P.