Radar Armenia‘s interlocutor is political scientist Davit Stepanyan.
– At the government session, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan announced the readiness of the Armenian proposals for a peace treaty and to transfer them to the Azerbaijani side and the OSCE Minsk Group. What developments do you foresee?
– The negotiations on the peace treaty will continue. After some time, Azerbaijan will once again send its edited version. And that process will take a long time. It is too early to expect that shortly, there can be a consensus on the issues on which Baku and Yerevan have differences. All that needs time. The main reason is the dangerous position of Azerbaijan. It should be understood that Azerbaijan continues to demand a corridor through the territory of Armenia with extraterritorial conditions and continues to demand eight villages, which it considers an enclave. And this position is not beneficial for Armenia and cannot become a reality.
– Nikol Pashinyan and Ilham Aliyev will attend the Munich Security Conference. Can their meeting provide an inevitable shift in the Armenian-Azerbaijani negotiations?
– As I mentioned, Azerbaijan’s non-constructive behavior prevents the peace treaty signing. And when we say Azerbaijan, we mean Ilham Aliyev. Aliyev feeds on this conflict; his power feeds on the blood of Armenians and Azerbaijanis. In this regard, it is too early to expect that his possible meeting with Pashinyan in Munich can provide progress within the framework of the peace agreement and speed up the process.
– RA Foreign Minister visited Turkey, and there was talk about reaching bilateral agreements and speeding up the dialogue process. How accurate is the process’s acceleration if we consider that Turkey always conditions the construction of its relations with Armenia with the Nagorno-Karabakh problem and Armenian-Azerbaijani relations?
– The process has already accelerated. It is a fact. The statements made after the Mirzoyan-Chavusoglu meeting testifies to that. First, we are talking about the infrastructure that needs to be rebuilt. It is a different question of how that process can end. Over time this process will speed up even more, and there will be a tangible result, at least in the opening of the Armenian-Turkish border, but it is again a matter of time; it may take months or years. But the fact that what happened – the meeting, the announcements – was at RA’s suggestion, and our leadership played the first violin role here is undeniable. It was a correct, calculated, and constructive step. Hopefully, it will have a logical end in opening the Armenian-Turkish border.
