"Nezavisimaya Gazeta": OSCE MG Washington Meeting May Be Mere Measure on Duty

PanARMENIAN.Net - A two-day meeting of co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group for settlement of the Nagorno Karabakh conflict is finishing in Washington today. This time the mediators decided to do without representatives of Azerbaijan and Armenia, reports the Nezavisimaya Gazeta. Ambassadors Yuri Merzlyakov (Russia), Steven Mann (US) and Bernard Fassier (France) will work for finding a way out of the stalemate in the talks after the February meeting of the Azeri and Armenian Presidents in Rambouillet. The newspaper reminds that "hopes pinned on the meeting near Paris were too much and they did not come true. No new ideas or methods of settlement were declared in Rambouillet. Moreover, in less than a month Yerevan and Baku restarted speaking about war. At that not only publicists and politicians show notorious spirit of war."



"Parties' statements make the task of the mediators utterly complicated. In that light this meeting of the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs may be a mere measure on duty that decides nothing," the edition notes. On the whole, according to Russian political scientist, head of the section of international relations of the Institute for Military and Political Analysis Sergey Markedonov, "activation demonstrated by the OSCE lately (not to say imitation) in the peacemaking has an opposite effect." In the expert's opinion, "constantly initiating some peace expectations (without reaching these) more looks like senseless digging up of a wound. In Markedonov's opinion, the Washington meeting will be one of the same range: "the professional peacemakers" were not able to propose any practicable peace plan to Baku and Yerevan and they have nothing to propose today."



"Mediators' desire to make progress in making parties' stands closer exactly this year is quite understandable. On the one hand, next year parliamentary elections are due in Armenia, while forces in Azerbaijan will focus on presidential election in 2008. Yerevan and Baku will have a lot of other things to do besides Karabakh. However, the state of neither war, nor peace cannot last forever. In this situation many experts think that a time-out is more logical. According to Merkedonov, taking into account the current reality, "the parties would only benefit from some lull in the imitation peacemaking of the OSCE MG," the Nezavisimaya Gazeta writes.