MOSCOW, January 23. /TASS/. The Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict is not over, although the situation on the border is relatively calm, Alexander Iskandaryan, the Director of the Caucasus Institute in Yerevan, said in a discussion on the platform of the Valdai international club.
"The conflict is not over. The military conflict is not relevant, at least for now, thank God, but in general the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan is not over, to put it mildly. To call these countries partners now is really a little bit difficult," he said.
"On the one hand, last year the situation on the border was relatively calm. There were no serious clashes. But I would not say that the peace process is moving on," the expert emphasized.
According to Iskandaryan, the process of border delimitation is far from being finalized.
"Delimitation and so on - these are all fine words, but the real issue is that about 12 kilometers of the border has been changed. Armenia has transferred four areas to Azerbaijan, which, of course, accepted this with pleasure. But the Armenian-Azerbaijani border is hundreds of times larger than these kilometers, there are quite a lot of disputable aspects. Delimitation is a rather complicated process," the analyst noted.
The expert also drew attention to the difficulties in drafting a peace treaty.
"Optimistic statements are made in the media all the time: 3 points are left, 2 points are left, a certain point has been excluded. This reminds me of the work that the Minsk Group has been doing for decades: one small point always remained unresolved while everything seemed to have been settled. The problems here are not legal, but political," Iskandaryan explained.
Search for compromise
For his part, Sergey Markedonov, a leading research fellow at the Center for Euro-Atlantic Security at the Institute of International Studies of the MGIMO Institute of International Studies of the Russian Foreign Ministry, pointed out that the conflict continued precisely because the parties concerned do not see a compromise settlement. "The parties are still not ready for peace, understood as a compromise, concessions, and mutually beneficial deals," the expert noted.
He believes that this is an Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict, not a Karabakh conflict. "Karabakh is part of the problem. There are problems of the notorious corridor, demarcation and delimitation of borders. There is a problem of national statehood," he said. "This conflict is about states and their statehood. In the Caucasus the territorial factor is extremely important."