AIISA associate expert Ruben Mehrabyan was impressed by the constructive behavior of the President of Azerbaijan. He spoke about it on November 30 during an expert discussion entitled “Armenia’s Security Agenda Ahead of Summits in Europe” at the Armenian Institute for International Security. He does not rule out that Ilham Aliyev will be asked questions in Azerbaijan: where is the victory, why didn’t you
talk about it, where is the peace agreement with Armenia on the terms of Azerbaijan that you did not talk about, where is the Zangezur corridor? Ruben Mehrabyan does not know what Aliyev will answer. As for the RA Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, he says, he simply said the same thing in Russian as on Public Television. “We did not see any scenes of transformation from the Armenian side as from the Azerbaijani side.”
AIISA associate expert Ruben Mehrabyan
According to Ruben Mehrabyan, before Brussels we will have three more important meetings: presumably in Russia, a meeting at the level of Deputy Prime Ministers, a meeting of the OSCE Ministerial Council, and the subsequent Summit of Democracies in the United States. According to him, what the Armenian side has to say everywhere should be a common negotiating agenda, the first step of which was achieved in Sochi, separating three important provisions: demarcation, unblocking of communications, and the Karabakh issue.
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In his opinion, what is impossible to solve at the moment, we should leave aside. We should solve the issues that can be solved, not allowing Azerbaijan to bring in its favorite disagreements and thus close everything, also threatening that it will use force if it does not get what it wants.
Ruben Mehrabyan thinks that the Armenian side should leave Azerbaijan under as many obligations as possible in order to raise the political price of violating the agreements. And the forthcoming meetings, in that sense, are the best opportunity for Armenian diplomacy. According to the expert, the process is currently on the path of Armenian interests as much as possible. And the key to success is the diversification of relations and politics, and in the November 16 attack on the Armenian border, he assessed Azerbaijan as a dumb tool to hit Armenia. As a result, he also sees a political transformation in the Russian president, who welcomed the forthcoming Aliyev-Putin meeting in Brussels, while a few days ago the Kremlin was quite jealous of the meeting. And if the mood in the Kremlin does not change, according to him, the process will move forward, from which everyone will benefit.
Nelly GRIGORYAN
