Karabakh analyst: “After the Lisbon Summit Russia began losing ground in the Karabakh peace process”

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“There has been no significant progress in the settlement of the Azeri-Karabakh conflict in the last 12 years of truce in the conflict zone; mostly because the trilateral settlement format Azerbaijan — Nagorno Karabakh – Armenia ‘departed from life’ in 1997-1998 after the OSCE Lisbon Summit applied the notorious ‘international law principles’ to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict,” independent Karabakh analyst David Karabekyan says in an interview to REGNUM.

After that, Russia began gradually losing its initiative, and after the Lisbon Summit of 1996 “the activity of France and the US, as OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs, got, if not higher, then, at least, not lower than that of Russia.” “The US’ growing activity in the post-Soviet area, the victory of color revolutions in Ukraine and Georgia, the ongoing withdrawal of Russian troops from Georgia, demands for their withdrawal from Transdnestr, rising US-Iranian tensions – this all has urged the ‘unrecognized’ or ‘unrepresented’ states to look anew at the problem of their security,” says Karabekyan.

He says that after the overthrow of the Abashidze regime in Ajaria, liquidation of the Russian military bases in Akhalkalaki (Georgia), completion of preparations for launch of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline, creation of the Azerbaijan-Georgian transport corridor between the Caspian and Black Sea countries, geo-political arc the US-Turkey-Ukraine-Georgia-Azerbaijan has closed up near the borders of Armenia in the south, Belarus — in the west and Russia — in the north.

Karabekyan also notes that, apart from being just promising financially, the transit energy and transport corridor via Azerbaijan to Europe has inspired Azeri President Ilham Aliyev so much that he keeps talking about Azerbaijan’s growing role in the South Caucasus. “Naturally, such conditions will make it easier for Baku to push its plan of the conflict settlement, and, sooner or later, Yerevan and Stepanakert will have to reckon with it,” says Karabekyan.