James O’Brien, assistant secretary at the department’s Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs, said that Washington is pursuing a peace agreement between Yerevan and Baku as he spoke to members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee’s Subcommittee on Europe meeting on the subject of “the future of Nagorno-Karabakh.”
“The next few weeks will be critical in testing the parties’ willingness to go from good intentions to saying “yes”, because we all know that “yes” is the hardest word to get in a negotiation,” he said.
The U.S. diplomat did not say what specific agreements were on the table. He only emphasized that Washington remains “deeply engaged.”
“We’ve made clear that nothing will be normal with Azerbaijan after the events of September 19 until we see progress on the peace track. So we’ve canceled a number of high-level visits, condemned the actions… We don’t anticipate submitting a waiver on Section 907 until such time that we see a real improvement,” O’Brien said in reference to Baku’s military operation in Nagorno-Karabakh that resulted in the virtually entire local Armenian population fleeing their homes and moving to Armenia.
As for Azerbaijan’s demands that Armenia give it a land corridor to its western exclave of Nakhichevan, the U.S. diplomat said that it is Washington’s position that “no use of force is acceptable.”
“A transit corridor built with the involvement and consent of Armenia can be a tremendous boom to states across the region and the global markets that will receive access to these goods. A transit corridor created some other way – by force or with the involvement of Iran – will, I think, be met with a very strong reaction and will not be a success. That’s a simple choice,” he said.
O’Brien said that Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian, with whom he had a meeting in Paris last week, “seems willing to take chances for peace.”
“The question really is whether [Azerbaijani] President [Ilham] Aliyev is willing to do that. And he has said he is. So now is the moment, because the challenge always for a power that feels stronger – and I think it’s fair to say Azerbaijan feels that it has the oil and gas revenues, the relationships, the ability to have some options – the challenge is always when it’s time to cash the options in and commit to one path for the future,” he said, adding that the United States is also “talking a lot with Turkey,” a close ally of Azerbaijan, on that matter.
“We’re trying to lay out a path that makes clear the benefits that come from peace and the costs that come with choosing to wait further. And really the decision will be on whether he [Aliyev] says “yes” or “not”, and we want that to happen in the next few weeks,” he said.
According to O’Brian, peace will enable Armenia and Azerbaijan to reduce the influence of Russia and Iran in the region, on the other hand, to increase cooperation with the West.
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