Aravot’s interlocutor, political scientist Alen Ghevondyan, referred to the meeting of the Foreign Ministers of Armenia and Azerbaijan in Tbilisi, about which the messages spread by the Armenian side and the Azerbaijani side raised more questions than they gave answers, in particular, the Foreign Minister of Azerbaijan said “Armenian armed forces from the territory of Azerbaijan regarding the withdrawal of forces,” referring to the humanitarian issues, emphasized the importance of “finding out the fates of about 4,000 missing Azerbaijanis.”
Our interlocutor noticed, “Since the processes and changes taking place in the region are related to the relations between the states of the region and global states, naturally, the meeting between the heads of the Armenian and Azerbaijani foreign departments in Georgia was one of the important elements of this political puzzle. Naturally, the messages had to be different because we have a situation where the Armenian side very often negotiates something and does not represent that the material of the negotiations was exactly that, because we later find out that it was a gross violation of Armenian national interests and the manifestation of another concessionary policy.
Let me remind you that days after that meeting and the message spread by the Azerbaijani side, the secretary of the RA Security Council announced that the Armenian armed forces are being withdrawn from Artsakh. He was also probably referring to the technology, and the new recruits will no longer serve there. In other words, we actually have a process of the military element of the handover of Artsakh, which was announced by Azerbaijan at the highest level and was an agreement a long time ago, not reached now. In general, the Armenian side, in the Armenian-Azerbaijani negotiation format, behaves very barren and impotent, they almost agree with all the elements that Azerbaijan offers, only if no condition related to the Armenian government appears.
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There are several issues here that are key for the RA authorities, because they are very important and very sensitive from the point of view of intra-public PR. It is the problem of returning captives. But Azerbaijan is quite tough because, probably, there was an agreement between Ilham Aliyev and Pashinyan that the Armenian-Azerbaijani peace treaty should be signed very quickly, and as of now, Pashinyan understands that signing the treaty is a red line, including geopolitically, which he cannot cross at least at this stage, because the consequences can also be extremely dangerous and unpredictable for him.
Unfortunately, Armenia lost its subjectivity in these processes a long time ago, and it seems that there is no desire to restore subjectivity, because subjectivity implies a struggle for national interests, and everything, including verbal agreements, as well as personal contacts that took place between Pashinyan and Aliyev- and the Azerbaijani side probably has the recording of this- will be very problematic for the current government of RA.”
Nelly GRIGORYAN
