Without a peace treaty, infrastructure projects with Armenia are untenable Azerbaijani, Russian pundits talk to Caliber.Az

On October 15, the State Flag of Azerbaijan was raised over the whole of Karabakh. In fact, the Karabakh issue is closed once and for all, all insinuations and manipulations related to the territorial integrity of our country are over. However, the problems of the region do not end here. The restoration of a completely destroyed economy - infrastructure, enterprises, arable land - is ahead. At the same time, the critical issue of signing a peace treaty with Armenia remains.

What strategy should Baku follow in further dialogue with Yerevan, how realistic are the plans to conclude a final peace with it? What exactly should we expect from the scheduled meeting of the leaders in Brussels and how will Pashinyan behave in the future? Azerbaijani and Russian experts expressed their opinions on this issue.

Farhad Mammadov, a political scientist and head of the South Caucasus Research Centre, noted in a conversation with Caliber.Az that by hoisting its flag over the entire territory of Karabakh, Azerbaijan has demonstrated that the issue of the country's territorial integrity is closed for us forever.

"At the same time, Azerbaijan is ready to accept Karabakh Armenians and act as a guarantor of their rights in case they accept citizenship of our country. But the topic of Armenia's territorial claims to Azerbaijan, alas, is not closed yet, so now the main thing is to legally consolidate Yerevan's refusal of territorial claims to Azerbaijani lands. We hear a lot of statements from the Armenian leadership and the Western community, but they are just statements. In order to back them up with legislation, Pashinyan should not only say that Karabakh is Azerbaijan but also allow changes to be made to the preamble of the Armenian Constitution or the cancellation of the 1992 law that prohibits the country's leadership from signing any documents that consider Karabakh territory to be Azerbaijani. Therefore, the main goal of the peace treaty with Armenia is the levelling by the Armenian authorities of the legal aspect - all their claims to the Republic of Azerbaijan," the political scientist believes.

Along with this, Mammadov also emphasises the geopolitical significance of the peace treaty against the background of turbulence in the north and south of the South Caucasus - the war in Ukraine and the Palestinian-Israeli military confrontation.

"Therefore, clarity in relations with Armenia and in general in the regional context is essential to Azerbaijan. I think that the initiative voiced by Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev on a trilateral summit of South Caucasus countries implies exactly this.

As for the Zangezur corridor issue, yes, it is an element of interdependence and regional integration, and that is why Azerbaijan is promoting it. But it is a derivative of the peace treaty. Without it such infrastructure projects are unrealistic.

As for the meeting in Brussels, it seems to me that everything has already been discussed, the participants know each other's positions and the meeting will be a kind of marker of how we are moving - going on a constructive spiral or a deconstructive one," the political analyst said.

In his opinion, in case of a constructive version of the meeting in Brussels, the sides may agree on a road map, for example, on the release of servicemen arrested in Armenia and Azerbaijan over the past few months, which was mentioned back in May. Preparatory work for a commission on border delimitation could also begin.

"I believe that the difference between the upcoming meeting in Brussels and previous ones is that the Karabakh issue as an obstacle to the conclusion of a peace treaty has been removed. Although, of course, if the Armenian side and its patrons in France and partly the United States persist, it will not lead to anything good. On the other hand, the difference between the expected meeting and the previous one is the fact that the time has come to make decisions, and these decisions must be implemented in the shortest possible time. So that the region would enter an open, constructive spiral and we would have results in the near future," Mammadov said.

Meanwhile, Russian political scientist Andrei Petrov, Deputy Director General of the Vestnik Kavkaza news agency, predicts that in the near future, Azerbaijan will focus more on the internal agenda, on the processes of the revival of Karabakh and Eastern Zangezur. And, in his opinion, this will also work on Azerbaijan's foreign policy course, because Baku is restoring towns and villages, clearly demonstrating that it acts exclusively constructively - as a builder and as a master, while at the same time revealing the facts of Armenia's destructive activities in the occupied territories. And these facts will be presented to the world community.

"At the same time, I am sure that the anti-Azerbaijani campaign will continue in the West, especially in those countries that seek to oust Russia from Armenia, acting, however, solely due to their own interests, and not because they are against Azerbaijan. It is simply because in the West all other countries are considered to be mere tools, not partners. In the fight against this anti-Azerbaijani propaganda, such facts as the day before, for example, when Ilham Aliyev laid the foundations of new buildings and villages in the Fizuli district, will work very effectively, especially when in parallel, video materials are presented to show what the occupants left of these villages: the houses are not just destroyed, but dismantled brick by brick and taken to Armenia. In this way, it will be proved that Armenia acted as a thief, plunderer and destroyer in Karabakh, while Azerbaijan, on the contrary, acts as a thrifty, caring owner of its land, because it is interested in seeing it flourish and its people live in prosperity.

I think that the issue of the peace treaty while remaining topical for Azerbaijan, will not be so acute any more. The fact is that Baku does not need enhanced diplomatic tools since the most important issues have already been resolved - Armenian troops have been withdrawn from Azerbaijan, and the constitutional order in the country has been restored to 100 per cent. Ilham Aliyev finally raised the State Flag of Azerbaijan in Khankendi, Khojaly and Agdara. It was a very joyful and reverent event, and I was very happy to watch it," Petrov emphasised.

Now, as he believes, paradoxically, Armenia is more interested in the peace treaty because the issues that create more inconveniences for Yerevan remain unresolved.

"First of all, it is the opening of transport communications - Armenia remains a country locked from almost all sides, having only a tiny border with Iran and Georgia. The fact that Armenia refuses to fulfil its obligations on the Zangezur corridor is now more of a problem for Armenia itself because Azerbaijan has already laid the foundations of a road bridge across Iran and is preparing to do the same for railway communications. That is, we expect that the corridor will be realised along the right bank of the Araz, in the part between Zangilan and Nakhchivan, passing through the territory of Iran. And, therefore, from that moment Iran will be involved in regional economic processes, and Armenia will be excluded from all this if it does not want to do anything so much. But if the Zangezur corridor will not be opened through Armenian territory, why should Azerbaijan open the border with Armenia at all? Azerbaijan has no interest in this, all its transport routes go through Georgia, and now they will go through the Zangezur corridor with a forty-kilometre section in Iran. Armenia is no longer needed here, and here it has to think of a way to convince Azerbaijan to open its borders. At the same time, it will have to convince Türkiye, which will also not open its border with Armenia until it has resolved this issue with Azerbaijan.

The return of Azerbaijani refugees to Armenia, to West Azerbaijan remains a long-standing topic, and I think this topic will be raised more actively, especially in response to any claims of Armenia. Azerbaijan used to negotiate with Armenia, linking everything to Armenia's peaceful closure of the separatist project. But now this project simply does not exist, and Armenia cannot offer it to Baku. Accordingly, Azerbaijan now has its hands free, and therefore the theme argument about the return of refugees will be heard more and more often if Armenia wants something else from Azerbaijan.

Another issue is Armenia's interaction with the West, and I think we will witness a complicated diplomatic process in the Armenia-West-Russia triangle with various plot twists. Because, as I see in the expert community and in the official statements of the authorities after Azerbaijan regained full control over its territories, Russia switched to the tactics of intensified negotiations with Armenia to preserve Russian-Armenian cooperation, primarily in the economy. Because after the Karabakh factor disappeared, Moscow can now strengthen its relations with Yerevan in a bilateral format without infringing on Azerbaijan's interests. If Nikol Pashinyan does not want to maintain cooperation with Russia in the political or military-political plane, Moscow can follow another, let's say, 'Georgian' scenario - developing them in the sphere of economic ties. Even if Yerevan demands the withdrawal of the 102 Russian military bases from the country.

One can be sure that the West, apart from military and political successes, is not interested in anything else in Armenia, and it is not worth counting on any economic cooperation between Armenia either - no one is going to open the European market for Armenian goods.

One way or another, Russia is now extremely interested in the peace treaty between Azerbaijan and Armenia, because it allows it to settle the situation on Russia's southern borders. There is a paradoxical moment when Armenia is most interested in the conclusion of a peace treaty, while Russia will make the most efforts to conclude it. The West in Armenian-Azerbaijani contacts pursues exclusively its own interests, and although it will demonstrate some attempts to advance the conclusion of a peace treaty, in fact, it will play for the preservation of tension in the relations between Baku and Yerevan, because using this state of tension, the West infiltrates and gets a foothold in Armenia," Petrov summed up.