The Armenian and Azeri Diasporas should be attracted to the Karabakh settlement process to establish trust between the conflicting parties, head of the department for national relations of the Institute of Political and Military Analysis Sergey Markedonov stated, RIA Novosti reports. “The principal problem of Karabakh settlement is the absence of trust between Yerevan and Baku”, he says. The expert reminded that Baku insists on return of the territories and then determination of the status of Nagorno Karabakh. “However the Armenian party doubts Azerbaijan will keep its promise”, Markedonov added. He stressed that there is a key problem of trust, which cannot be solved by Russia, the U.S., Turkey or the OSCE Minsk Group. “There should be contacts and discussions of new models. Presently package and stepwise variants of settlement have collided and no progress is observed. Bilateral activity of Armenia and Azerbaijan should be more serious while the OSCE Minsk Group should not be expected to work a miracle,” he said. In his opinion, a different scheme should be elaborated, since neither package nor stepwise variants are compromise. As for Russia’s initiative, the political scientist noted that “to make any proposals, Russia should have precise Caucasian strategy that is absent at present. Nevertheless, in Markedonov’s opinion, taking into account the strong Armenian and Azeri Diasporas Russia can transmit the experience upon the Armenian-Azeri relations in the South Caucasus. “Russia can use it as a resource of informal reconciliation”, the expert resumed.
ԻմPANը
