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.