Thursday, January 31 2019 19:26

ArmInfo. According to my  forecasts, the United States, and not only, will exert pressure on  Armenia, demanding concessions from Yerevan on the Artsakh issue.  ArmInfo expressed a similar opinion on the director of <Hay Date>  office responsible for political issues, member of the ARF  <Dashnaktsutyun Bureau> Kiro Manoyan.

"For this pressure, all the prerequisites are observed, I expect it  soon enough, however, I don't think that we will give in to it. In my  opinion, especially today we simply have no right to it. I'm just  convinced that in the absence of implementation of the Vienna and  subsequent of the St. Petersburg agreements on the creation of  confidence-building measures and control over cases of violation of  the cease-fire regime on the border, the transition to the phase of  direct resolution of the conflict for Armenia and above all Artsakh  poses a great danger, "he stressed.The discussion on the immediate  prospects for the settlement of the Karabakh conflict has intensified  significantly since the end of 2018. 

In December, following talks with Zohrab Mnatsakanyan, the Foreign  Minister of Azerbaijan, Elmar Mamedyarov, stated that "for the first  time in a long time, mutual understanding was achieved with an  Armenian colleague." After that, the January talks between the  foreign ministers of Armenia and Azerbaijan ended with a formula on  "preparing nations for peace." Three informal meetings of Nikol  Pashinyan and Ilham Aliyev fueled the situation even more.Manoyan  believes that shifting the issue of the implementation of these  agreements to the background of Baku allowed the change of power and,  accordingly, the Artsakh negotiators in Armenia. As a result, the  three informal meetings of Nikol Pashinyan with Ilham Aliyev not only  led to Baku's refusal to fulfill the Vienna and St. Petersburg  agreements, but also made it possible to further de-emphasize the  legal status of Artsakh.

According to him, Yerevan stopped demanding from Baku implementation  of the agreements in Vienna and St. Petersburg precisely as a result  of reaching an agreement on preventing incidents at the border and  the Pashinyan-Aliyev contact line. However, according to Manoyan's  predictions, in the future, these agreements will not prevent Baku  from once again making more frequent the cases of cease-fire  violation, up to an attempt to repeat the April 2016 scenario."In  this light, the analyst believes that the only way to influence Baku  is the recognition of Artsakh's independence by Armenia. According to  his estimates, this will not only exert the strongest pressure on  Azerbaijan's position in the negotiation process, but also greatly  simplify the recognition of Artsakh by other states. And a lot today,  "summed up Manoyan.