Azerbaijani expert: Minsk Group's lack of reaction to Armenia's silence is surprising

"The situation now is that Azerbaijan has adopted a peace plan for settling the Karabakh conflict on the basis of the updated Madrid principles developed by the OSCE Minsk Group. But Armenia has not done this yet,” Director of the Baku-based Center for Peace and Conflict Resolution Elkhan Mehdiyev said.  

"Position of the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs is surprising. They do not make any statements on the matter. Even during their latest visit to Baku, they did not say anything about it. Negotiations are allegedly underway. The Azerbaijani side requires an answer from the mediators and Armenia” he said.

"Frankly, I myself was surprised at the situation,” says the expert.

“What will the co-chairs offer now? We are talking about their product they were working on for the last 2 years! They have developed it for adoption by Azerbaijan and Armenia. And now they behave as if there are no documents on the table. But the fact is that one of the sides has accepted the peace plan while the other side has not. There is no reaction from the outside either.”

As to more powerful states’ ability to influence this process, Mehdiyev noted that "the main detonator here is Turkey. This country works in this direction even harder than the parties to the conflict. Turkey has included this issue in meetings with top leaders of France, Russia and the U.S.”

“This issue will be on the agenda also of the upcoming Medvedev-Erdogan meeting to take place in May. We expect great results from this meeting,” the expert added.

“On the other hand, there is another reason. Azerbaijan-U.S. ties cooled to some extent lately as Americans want to separate the issue of the Armenian occupation of our lands from the Turkish-Armenian dialogue. This had a very negative impact on Armenian-Azerbaijani negotiations and inspired Yerevan on an even greater arrogance. And in the context of the April meetings, Washington seemed to have forgotten about the peace plan put forward by the co-chairs of the Minsk Group,” Mehdiyev noted.


/Day.Az/