U.S. website “The National Interest” issues article on Kerry, Go Fix Karabakh!
Baku, July 28 (AZERTAC). U.S. website “The National Interest” has posted an article titled Kerry, Go Fix Karabakh!
The article written by Alexandros Petersen says: “In late June, press around the world reported that Azerbaijan had finally chosen an export pipeline for its natural gas to reach European markets. This process took over a decade and involved in-depth involvement by Washington in the form of the U.S. Special Envoy for Eurasian Energy and the hard work of the new Bureau of Energy Resources under Secretary Kerry at the State Department. Since President Clinton’s first term, through Democratic and Republican administrations, connecting Azerbaijan’s resources with NATO allies in Europe has been a strategic priority.
The natural gas pipelines connecting Azerbaijan to Europe inevitably have to snake around neighboring Armenia because of the intractable conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh. This so-called frozen conflict has since the end of the Cold War become synonymous with the sort of faraway, messy and unrewarding conflagrations that Washington does not want to get mixed up in. But in this case, the far from frozen, but rather simmering conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia is one that will come back to haunt the United States if it does not do its best to encourage a process towards conflict settlement.
With the fates of Egypt and Syria uncertain and Secretary Kerry stuck in the perennial logjam of Israel-Palestine, Nagorno-Karabakh actually presents the State Department with a conflict resolution process that could become a major success story. Azerbaijan becomes an increasingly faithful ally of the United States—assisting in both the Afghanistan and Iraq theaters.
Secretary Kerry has on numerous occasions recognized the importance of moving towards conflict resolution on Karabakh. During the recent visit of Azerbaijan’s foreign minister to Washington, Kerry said that resolution was “critical” at this moment for many of the reasons described above. Kerry is in fact uniquely suited to shepherding a solution to the conflict. Azerbaijan is a close partner of the United States, but Kerry in particular has the trust of the Armenians, having long represented the interests of vocal Armenian-Americans as a Massachusetts senator.
To achieve success during his tenure, however, Kerry must tweak his approach. The crux of the disagreement over the contested territory of Karabakh—which is within internationally recognized Azerbaijan, but occupied by Armenia—is that the two sides cannot come to terms on the final status of the area. However, trying to find some, informal at least, agreement on final status as a pretext for negotiations is a nonstarter. This is putting the cart before the horse.
Breakthrough on Karabakh, and a much needed foreign-policy success for the Obama administration, will only come if Secretary Kerry brokers high-level negotiations and some tangible progress on the ground without preconditions.”
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