The settlement of the Karabakh problem has a worthy alternative to the idea of cession of districts, ex-foreign minister of Nagorno-Karabakh, independent analyst Arman Melikyan has told ArmInfo, when commenting on the results of the Moscow meeting of the Armenian and Russian presidents on August 10.
"I am convinced that Yerevan should seriously revise its own logic and approaches towards the Karabakh talks. I think cession of the districts under any circumstances is harmful and dangerous. I think the fact that at the talks in Moscow Vladimir Putin and Serzh Sargsyan did not say a single word about the cession of five districts demonstrates that the Kremlin has no need to speak with Yerevan about it," Melikyan says.
The analyst believes that Serzh Sargsyan shows consistency in this matter. He considers cession of territories in exchange for a status to be a mutual concession, however, time is marching forward and the world is intensively changing, constantly tossing challenges to everyone. In this light, Melikyan thinks the Armenian president's Moscow statements about willingness to observe the arrangements on Karabakh reached through the mediation of Russia show his own willingness to keep the previously given promises. "In fact, this settlement option vaunted by the Russian political circles is nothing but cession of two-thirds of Artsakh's territory in exchange for a vague status. This is presented as a mutually acceptable solution based on equal concessions. I think the first step to that end was the shady military undertaking of Baku in early April and its results were reinforced by the following political impulses," the expert notes.