- The recent developments in Syria can be viewed in the following order: the use of chemical weapons,   preparations for the U.S. military operation in Syria, Russia's initiative to transfer the control over Syrian chemical weapons to the international community, make it impossible to launch active U.S. military operations against Syria in the coming months.

 

The analysis of media reports shows that the process of establishing control over chemical weapons will take several months and will involve a number of stages. For example, the newspaper Commersant writes about four stages: "the first stage - Syria joins the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) , the second stage - Damascus declares the storage and production of chemical weapons , the third stage - it allows OPCW inspectors in, the fourth stage - it decides together with the inspectors how and by whom the chemical weapons will be destroyed." According to Western sources, the plan was agreed with Presidents Obama and Putin at the G20 summit in St. Petersburg.

 

The Italian weekly Panorama informs about some plan for 2014, which provides for the transfer of power to the interim military council from among the opposition- minded members of the Alawite community which Assad belongs to. The latter will leave the country and thereby will create conditions for a peaceful resolution of the Syrian conflict. This is a plausible interpretation, which fits into the chain of recent events around Syria.

 

Against this background, the refusal of many NATO countries to participate in the U.S. operation against Syria is due to several factors. Firstly, the West showed in this manner that the operation is not civilization and religious, and secondly, there was no need for concentration of force against a small country weakened, and thirdly, the Islamic factor in Europe, and fourthly, the threat of influx of Syrian refugees in Europe (up to 2,000,000).

 

 

- You cannot say that the U.S. and Russia are opposed to each other in the Syrian conflict. The recent events or the denouement of the plot reversely show the cooperation between the two countries to dismantle the Assad regime. Undoubtedly, each party has its own interests associated with Syria. These interests are both in Syria, or lie outside it, for example, the market for energy or weapons, the zone of Eurasia, where countries compete with each other. And Syria here is just a small change.

 

In this big policy role countries such as Armenia and Azerbaijan are negligible, or it is not there at all. But the impact of the Syrian crisis on the South Caucasian countries is there. And it is in two planes - the power and the civil society. The authorities in Azerbaijan are sensitive to the situation in Syria due to the fact that another authoritarian regime akin to Baku is being killed. And the defeat of the Assad regime in Azerbaijan perceives its own failure as the accelerated approach to the end of authoritarianism in general. The public in Azerbaijan and Armenia sympathize with the tragedy of the Syrians because of the fact that both countries have experienced inter-ethnic wars with considerable human and material losses. Besides, in Armenia they worry about the large Armenian community in Syria, while in Azerbaijan we are concerned about the bloodshed among Muslims. However, these two completely different planes of power and the society in the Syrian drama have a common interest – to stop the bloodshed. This is manifested in the approach and policy of Armenia and Azerbaijan in Syria.

 

 

- A couple of nuances can be called regarding this matter. I would say that at this stage the Syrian crisis has a moral influence on Azerbaijan and humanitarian influence on Armenia. In Azerbaijan, the opponents of the regime believed that the fall of Assad before presidential elections in Azerbaijan on October 9 will inspire the disaffected citizens to fight against the government and will play an important role in the outcome of the election. For Armenia, which has faced a high rate of migration out of the country due to its poor economy, the arrival of Syrian Armenian refugees is straining the already difficult humanitarian situation.

 

 

- The single expectations that Azerbaijan and Armenia can be drawn into the conflict in Syria are not grounded. The two countries do not border with Syria, they do not have any economic interests there, are not tied with Syria by any military and political commitments. The countries are not included in military- political blocs that could oppose each other in Syria. The exception is only anecdotal evidence of the participation of Azerbaijani and Armenian citizens in the Syrian conflict for probably religious, political and financial reasons.

 

But the Syrian crisis as a link in the chain of the continuing Arab Spring, of course, indirectly, has an impact on the two South Caucasus countries. It's a fact - the revolutionary developments in the East are inexorably approaching the borders of the Caucasus, and they will cover the region as soon as the step over to Iran at the next stage of revolutionary change in authoritarian regimes.