​Elin Suleymanov: The U.S. must do more to deal with rising instability in the South Caucasus

Baku. 13 April. REPORT.AZ/ "Azerbaijan’s top diplomat in Washington said the U.S. must do more to deal with rising instability in his region, lest tensions that have already drawn in both Turkey and Russia spiral into more violence like the clashes that rocked the Nagorno-Karabakh region earlier this month."

Report informs, it was stated by the Azerbaijani Ambassador to the USA Elin Suleymanov in an interview with WashingtonTimes.

The Ambassador stressed that the US needs to pay more attention to the region, to avoid undermining regional stability.

Russia has sought to exert influence with both sides by providing weapons to both the Armenians and the Azerbaijanis. A key difference in the weapons deals, according to Mr. Suleymanov, is that energyAzerbaijan “actually pays” Moscow for military equipment while Armenia accepts it as aid from the Russians.

Indeed, Azerbaijan often has annual military expenditures in excess of Armenia’s entire state budget and, over the years, has threatened to seize Nagorno-Karabakh by force if peace negotiations remained stalled.

But the ambassador blamed Armenia for starting the violence in early April, suggesting that Yerevan had sought to provoke the clash in the wake of Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev’s trip to Washington late last month.

“Every time there is a move forward, Armenia tries to undermine it,” Mr. Suleymanov said.

A resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh stalemate, he added, could unlock other frozen conflicts dating to the break-up of the Soviet Union, from Georgia and Moldova to “perhaps even Ukraine, because all of them originate from the same patterning of undermining territorial integrity, and I think that’s the underlining factor here.”