Sargsyan-Aliyev meeting: standard scenario or anything new?

November 18, 2013 - 18:51 AMT

PanARMENIAN.Net - The ninth meeting between the Armenian and Azerbaijani Presidents will take place in Vienna on Nov 19.

The U.S. Co-chair of the OSCE Minsk Group for the Nagorno Karabakh conflict settlement, James Warlick, has already arrived in the Austrian capital in anticipation of the talks. However, ambassador Warlick’s optimism seems to have no ground, as the regular meeting will apparently have the same result as those previously held in Kazan, Saint Petersburg and Sochi.

According to some sources, President Serzh Sargsyan will stress the necessity of bringing the Nagorno Karabakh Republic back to negotiations.

Azerbaijani leader’s reaction and the following developments are quite predictable: Ilham Aliyev will slam the door. The Co-chairs will follow him to persuade to come back. They might succeed. Then, as usual, Baku will blame the failure on Yerevan and its “destructive” policy. Afterwards, the Co-chairs will issue a statement saying that there is a chance to continue talks.

The conflict is unsolvable, in principle. No change of power, ‘color’ revolutions or Arab Springs will help. Baku has just habituate itself to the fact that Artsakh had never been and will never be a part of Azerbaijan, irrelative of the number of false ‘scientific’ works written about it.

It should also be noted that the OSCE Minsk Group does nothing but maintains the status quo and organizes presidential meetings, which always have the same scenario: the mediators meet with the Presidents and Foreign Ministers, then a date for the presidential meeting is set. After Sargsyan and Aliyev spend several hours talking behind closed doors, the Co-chairs issue a standard statement to say that the “sides agreed to continue the negotiating process for a peaceful solution to the problem.”

According to U.S.-base Azerbaijani political analyst Alek Rasizade, the OSCE MG annual budget makes about 1 million euros. He also notes that with oil reserves waning, Azerbaijan’s possibilities to win over world powers will diminish as well. The expert says that the powerful Armenian Diaspora has counterbalanced the ‘oil lobby’ in Washington.

Thus, having failed to gain a diplomatic victory through interested in Azeri oil, Aliyev is trying the ‘Russian card’ in the dialogue with the United States and NATO.