Visits of President of Kazakhstan to Azerbaijan and Armenia to facilitate the settlement of the Nagorny Karabakh conflict – media

Almaty. August 18. Silkroadnews – The upcoming visits of Kazakhstan's President Nursultan Nazarbayev to Azerbaijan and Armenia shall serve to strengthen the mediation process on the Nagorny Karabakh conflict, Director of the Institute of the EEU, a member of the Zinoviev club at MIA «Russia today», Vladimir Lepekhin says.

«Now, in my opinion, there is some discomfort arising due to the fact that Russia is the only active mediator and takes on too much responsibility for the Karabakh problem solution. The point is the Caucasus passes through the establishment of the collective Eurasian security formula developing in two directions: the northern part of the Middle East and the EEU space. In terms of the collective security formation it would be right to have not only Putin taking part in the negotiations between the leaders of Azerbaijan and Armenia, but also other leaders of the Eurasian space, meaning, indeed, Nazarbayev», V. Lepekhin said to reporter of newspaper «Vestnik Kavkaza».

In his opinion, it would be quite reasonable to involve the president of Kazakhstan to take part to hold negotiations between Azerbaijan and Armenia over Nagorny Karabakh and other issues of cooperation between the two countries.

«In the current situation, when some political forces raise the claims to Russia on the sale of weapons to Azerbaijan, activating the role of a mediator between Azerbaijan and Armenia by Kazakhstan's President Nazarbayev is justified and logical», the expert note.

Kazakhstan is, of course, interested to have stability in the Caucasus region, he emphasized and added, Azerbaijan «is a border country for Kazakhstan» meaning Kazakhstan’s economic and political interests in this regard are «the most direct».

«There is the EEU space as well and Kazakhstan is interested to have Azerbaijan as a part of this space as its partner in the Caspian region. (...) The configuration we see now getting formed at the level of interaction of the EEU member states and the countries of the northern part of the Middle East is the basis for the formation of a unified Eurasian trade zone, where a number of states are, actually, building fundamentally new relations from the scratch», V. Lepekhin noted.

According to him, the interest is to «ensure the geopolitical vector driving any Western mediators out of the territory» and build all sorts of economic ties between states of the region, important not only from the logistics, but also from energy directions.

«(...) One way or another all the big states here are involved in either export or the transit of hydrocarbons. Kazakhstan is also very interested to develop relations with Azerbaijan in terms of good-neighborliness and economic partnership, and with Armenia, as the EEU member country, and as a whole to have peace in the Caucasus region», the expert summarized.