What plans do Obama and Medvedev have?

PanARMENIAN.Net - Moreover, it is absolutely obvious that the entire system of world order and the carcass remain the same as 60 years ago; only the political vectors are changing. If after Churchill's "Fulton speech" Eastern Europe and Near East became priority regions, the center has now shifted into the Caucasus and Central Asia. Moreover, taking into account the significance of the Caucasus for the system of regional and international security, we perceive that X Hour will soon arrive for the region, whose future will depend precisely on what Medvedev and Obama will agree on. Naturally no one is going to surrender their position in this fight, a problem we have already analyzed in discussing the spheres of influence. But there is one more player worth remembering - Europe, or to be more exact, President of France Nicolas Sarkozy, who is eager to show that without the European Union, any initiative in the region is doomed to failure. It was exactly what Sarkozy attempted to prove last year, introducing the plan of Georgian-Ossetian conflict regulation. By the way, he succeeded. And now he is flying to Moscow to participate in the negotiations on regulating the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. Let us note that earlier there had appeared information on Sarkozy planning to visit the countries of the South Caucasus in the middle of July.

If we believe the last statement of the OSCE Minsk Group Co-chairs on the "possible meeting between Sargsyan and Aliev in July", we can declare with absolute confidence that in Moscow talks the co-chair countries, in the person of their presidents, will exert pressure on the Presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan. And who will win the fame of a peacemaker is difficult to predict. But evidently it won't be Sarkozy, although the position of the EU is possible to be taken into account and used by one of the negotiators as counterbalance. In case resolution is adopted on the level Obama-Medvedev-Sarkozy, it would be all the same who would voice it.

In the issue the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict regulation we have only one truly serious problem - the status of NKR. All the other "basic principles" and Madrid proposals are based precisely on it. And, naturally, it is exactly the status of independent Karabakh that cannot satisfy Baku. Largely, Karabakh is necessary to Aliyev for settling the internal problems of his country, and more than once has it been discussed. The situation is similar to the Palestine-Israeli conflict - Arab leaders condemn "the unwillingness of the authorities of Israel to compromise" in order to distract their own population from misery and radicalism. Thus, the bellicose statements of the Azerbaijani President are simply statements. Obama and Medvedev need a region that would send its energy resources along the routes, selected for them by Russia and the USA, while the opinion of oil- and gas-producing countries won't be asked. At the moment there is a banal trading going on - who will pay more? Iran proposed buying all of the natural gas, mined from the second port of the Azerbaijani deposit Shahdeniz at acceptable prices; China proposed $3 billion to Turkmenistan for the development and purchase of gas, to say nothing of "Gazprom" that purchases gas everywhere, even in Algeria and Libya. But first conflicts need to be solved in order to ensure the security of the gas pipes: be it Nabucco or anything else. Moreover, on the basis of the same considerations of security it is also necessary to solve the Armenian-Turkish problem.

But until the Presidents' meeting there is still a month, during the Presidential elections of Iran are to take place. Much depends on who will become the new head of the only country in the region that is almost independent from the USA. If Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is elected, the region will remain as restless as now. However neither can anything be predicted in case of the victory of Musavi - the highest spiritual power in Iran belongs to Ayatollah Khamenei and without his blessings nothing can ever occur.

Sure, there is also the Turkish factor, which cannot be ignored. The visit of Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu to Washington showed that in distribution of influence spheres in the Caucasus, Ankara is not determined to remain in the role of an observer. Ankara is persistently trying to participate in the normalization of the situation in the Near East, but she hasn't succeeded so far. However, she is also trying to play her role in the OSCE Minsk Group, where she is always met with closed doors. But as soon as the mediators of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict regulation are tired of reconciling the conflicting sides, they may turn to Turkey for help. And what outcome it will have for Armenia and the NKR is as clear as a day.

Karine Ter-Sahakyan