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The latest trilateral Sochi meeting doesn’t suggest a visible progress in Karabakh peace talks, Thomas Ambrosio, Professor of political science at North Dakota State University, told Armenian News-NEWS.am in an emailed comment. Ceasefires have happened before, and will be broken and will happen again he added, commenting on the meeting of Presidents of Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Russia in Sochi on August 10.

“ I give two reasons for my pessimism. First, meetings like this have happened on and off since the beginning of the Minsk process in the early 1990s – two decades ago. Even without the other two Minsk players (France and the US), meetings such as this (Russia with the principals) have happened to no avail,” he remarked.

Why two decades of meetings have not led to any sort of resolution is because of the second reason: this is a frozen conflict for a reason, he stressed, explaining: “ The status quo of the situation – de facto Armenian control over N-K and de jure Azerbaijani rights to the territory – is better for both sides than the alternative”.

“Such an alternative for Armenia, he told, would risk the loss of the territory to an Azeri military boosted by petro-dollars, while for Azerbaijan would be the risk that Russia would decisively intervene on the side of its ally, Armenia, to the detriment of Azerbaijan, who is an ally of Moscow’s adversary, the United States”, he expanded.

Thus, both sides will continue to have meetings and pledge their support of the process, and the outside players will be consistent on their pledges to help the two sides come to a resolution. But ultimately little will transpire unless the US or Russia (most likely the latter) is willing to expend significant political and diplomatic capital to pressure one side to submit to the other, the expert concluded.

 

 

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