“The goal of the Armenian side was to find out whether in reality negotiations had reached an impasse and there was no other way than war, or, however, the problem could still be solved with minimal losses,” – said President of Armenia Serzh Sargsyan after the meeting with President of Azerbaijan in Vienna. We asked political scientist Sergey Minasyan what in fact we found out which of the options mentioned by the President is possible. “The fact that the negotiation process has reached an impasse, I think, everyone understands it. There are two questions: whether what happened was a way that only eliminates the possibility of a military solution to the problem, or we have an opportunity that as a result we would have a slightly modified but the same situation that we had in previous years, in other words, neither war nor peace,” said the political scientist.
According to him, we can say that we have made a significant achievement, and we can talk that the mechanisms for the preservation of a ceasefire regime are approved and so on. But it is evident that Azerbaijan has raised the possibility of resumption of hostilities as a result of its actions, and we must try to divide the military-political and diplomatic activities, “In terms of military-political, it is obvious that we should get ready for war even if we see that there is no other option, to attack first, and in terms of diplomacy, if there is an invisible progress that will give hope that yes it is possible to maintain the ceasefire regime, we must go for it, having in mind the fact that Azerbaijan’s experience of previous actions do not allow us to think that there is a more reliable mechanism than the restricting opportunities: RA and NKR defense armies.”
The political analyst described Serzh Sargsyan’s statement a pragmatic statement, saying, “I hope it will be much quieter than it has been until now.” “The politicians sometimes must show optimism even knowing the political situation, in this case, it is the optimism of the politician because I do not think that we would have qualitatively changed the situation on the contact line but I would like to be mistaken. The results of Aliyev-Sargsyan meeting are in conformity with the stated objectives; this was the first meeting in the last ten years that initially was announced that only issue of establishment and implementation of confidence-building mechanisms will be discussed. Another point that what was relevant one month or ten years ago, is not suffice at the moment. Whether we will have a situation where Azerbaijan will agree on maintenance of a complete ceasefire regime on the contact line, I doubt.”
Arpine SIMONYAN
