NURSULTAN NAZARBAYEV WANTS TO BE PEACEMAKER

PanARMENIAN.Net - The President of Kazakhstan stated his readiness to participate in the mission for achievement of peaceful settlement of the Karabakh conflict. The initiative worths encouragement. But there is one strange thing here. In the presence of Ilham Aliyev Nazarbayev stressed that official Astana sees the solution in the principle of territorial integrity. ''The firmness of the existing borders is a constant. We would like to see no separatism in the world and we stand for integrity of territories''. The fact that the leader of a country which is the alley of Armenia by the Collective Security Treaty, considers the national-liberation movement of Karabakh people separatism, is not very pleasant. The political figure claiming to be a mediator does not hide the fact that he divides the approaches of one of the conflict parties. This means his mission may not be very effecient.

It's not the first time when Nazarbayev proposes his services as a peacemaker. His previous attempt undertaken in 1990 together with the President Boris Yeltsin failed. At that time he was not making such statements which undoubtedly were the impact of economic interests. By the way, at the press conference taken place on Monday Nazarbayev advised Armenia to be guided first of all by economic interests: ''Azerbaijan is developing; Armenia could use its growing possibilities in case of a peaceful settlement of the conflict''.

Another statement of Kazakhstan's President is also very interesting. He said that believes in the future of transportation of the Kazakh oil through Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline. Immediately after it the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Azerbaijan spoke about a break in the issue of involvement of Astana to the ''century's project''. According to Vilayat Guliyev, ''for the first time Kazakhstan officially declared that it will use the pipeline''. The issue of Astana's involvement is very important for Baku because the Azerbaijani sector of the Caspian has not enough resources of hydrocarbons and the pipeline will not be rentable without the Kazakh oil. However, at the press conference Nazarbayev said only that ''Astana is interested in the success of the project because for Kazakhstan it is an alternative way of export of fuel''. He noted at the same time that there are several disputable issues concerning first of all the tariffs. This why Kazakhstan secures itself in case if under the pressure of Moscow the Russian route is chosen. Russia is not going to resign the transit of the Kazakhi oil which is very profitable and is a serious political key factor. At present Moscow has an emergency to neutralize the pressure on Astana made by Ankara which introduces artificial restrictions for the oil transportation via Bosporus and Dardanelle in order to make the Kazakhs use the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline. Recently the Deputy Foreign Minister of Russia Victor Kalyuzhni speaking at an oil-gas conference ''Turkiog-2004'' in Istanbul said that Moscow was not going to allow the illegal actions of Turkey which impedes the export of oil through channels.

The Russian-Kazakhi dialogue about the transportation of oil is continuing. So, it is too early to predict the success of ''century's project''.