Agreements achieved in Brussels are under question

The Armenian opposition traditionally reacted to the latest agreements between President Ilham Aliyev and Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, who held the third  round of talks  in Brussels on May 22 through the mediation of European Council President Charles Michel.

“Any agreement between Nikol Pashinyan and Ilham Aliyev is invalid, and the opposition will not allow the surrender of the interests of Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh,” Ishhan Saghatelyan, one of the leaders of the Resistance Movement, said on May 24 in front of the Armenian Foreign Ministry.

Saghatelyan called on supporters to gather in France Square to demand the resignation of Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, who is accused of surrendering the Armenian-populated territory of Karabakh (APTK) to Azerbaijan.

“During this week, we will start our traditional rallies from various administrative districts of Yerevan,” Saghatelyan wrote the day after the Aliyev-Pashinyan meeting in Brussels ended.

The main result of the negotiations in Brussels may be an agreement reached  during  the first joint meeting of the Border Commissions of the two countries on the Armenian-Azerbaijani border. Their makeup has already been determined and they will have a painstaking and difficult mission related to the delimitation and demarcation (DD) of the Armenian-Azerbaijani border and ensuring the stability of the border situation. The materialization of statements about commissions on DD that have been voiced earlier for a year and a half will be an important test for the negotiation process.

Since the end of the war and the adoption of the statement on the beginning of the peace process, the issue of DD, opening communications and reaching a peace treaty has been discussed at various venues, including Brussels and Moscow, but there has still been no practical implementation of the agreements.

The issue is not only that the peace process is being torpedoed by the Armenian opposition, which has become especially active since the second Brussels meeting on April 6, but also by the unwillingness of the government. At the CSTO summit in Moscow on May 16, Pashinyan tried to re-engage the members of this organization in the conflict with Azerbaijan. Recalling the need for interaction, he complained  that the CSTO did not intervene in the 44-day war. Behind this monologue, one can see the prime minister's inner state, which  does not coincide with his public expression about his readiness for compromises.

The leaders of the Armenian-populated territory of Karabakh (APTK) have already promptly rejected the possibility of the APTK being part of Azerbaijan. “We have repeatedly said that we will not be part of Azerbaijan. No matter who accepts, we will not be part of Azerbaijan,” said Gegham Stepanyan, Commissioner for Human Rights of the APTK.

If we raise the question of how the results of the third round of the Brussels talks can be assessed, then we can put it this way: the meeting was a step towards peace agreements, but before they were reached, the path did not shorten enough to make optimistic forecasts even for the near future.

The Armenian side will publicly do everything through the hands of the opposition to torpedo the development of the peace process, dragging it out until favorable times for Armenia, which may be associated with the cataclysms of the Ukrainian war. Supporters of this approach, and there are quite a few of them, believe that Armenia can take advantage of the formation of new geopolitical realities in order to achieve revenge on Azerbaijan.

“But I want to say that a defeat in a war is not a catastrophe, but an opportunity for new victories. We must evaluate and draw the right conclusions.” The chief military inspector of the Armenian Armed Forces, Colonel-General Movses Hakobyan made  this statement the day after the signing of the statement from 9 - 10 November, 2020. This position has been and is being expressed by various circles in Armenia in various interpretations, and there are no fewer of them.