Munich summit required ‘higher-level preparation’ – Armenian analyst on Pashinyan-Aliyev talks

The Armenian and Azerbaijani top leaders’ summit, held on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference, required a higher-level preparation to make our position more strong-worded and convincing, an Yerevan-based expert in international affairs said Wednesday, commenting on talks between Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev.

“Aliyev was there to voice theses related not just to the negotiation process per se but rather the text he was conveying to his domestic audience. Similarly, he made also Pashinyan use the same approach whereas the platfrom in question offered much more favorabla advantages to enable one in terms of sounding more perceivable and comprehensible to the international power centers acting in the capacity of mediators. I do not think the historical, legal and political nuances of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict are something like a riddle for the United States, Russia or France, and only Pashinyan and Aliyev were supposed to reveal its contnet,” Manuk Sukiasyan told Tert.am.

In his words, Pashinyan’s main omission at the meeting was his statement voicing an expectation of an international call for a peaceful settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh (Artsakh) conflict.

“it was an incomprehensivle and very primitive statement yielding absolutely no outcome. What Pashinyan expects existed actually for long. The expectation should have been different now. What he should have said is that if the international community does not want a bloodshed along the Line of Contact, it should have appeared with a statement saying that any of the conflicting side which will be proactive to renew the military actions must be prepared for, and reconcile itself with, bigger territorial gains by the other side.”

Another expectation from the international community, Manukyan said, would have been the deployment of ceasefire monitoring mechanisms in the conflict zone.

Addressing the recent reports of a meeting held between representatives of the Azerbaijani community of Nagorno-Karabakh (Artsakh) and the US Ambassador in Azerbaijan and the Personal Representative of the OSCE Chairperson-in-Office, the expert agreed that the kind of even would have necessarily evoked concerns.

″These are steps aiming to satisfy the ambitions of Azerbaijan, yet I again tie the Armenian side’s somewhat intert position on all this to the zero analytical-ideological base in [the talks] over Nagorno-Karabakh. Nikol Pashinyan does not have a strong, serious foreign policy team. It’s one and a half years now that he doe noe even have a foreign policy advisor, we do not know what recommendations Pashinyan gets and from whom and who actually forms his knowledge and onormation base before any negotiations,″ he added.