War is good for business, goes the old saying This adage is applicable to more than just defense industries. Some of the longest running international conflicts – between Azerbaijan and Armenia, Israel and the Palestinians, Morocco and Algeria-backed separatist organization Polisario, and India and Pakistan, all share several common denominators despite different cultures, histories, geopolitical positions, and political and economic climates.

Both leaders welcomed heightened ties with the EU. Baku said it invited the bloc to help with the post-war reconstruction of Azerbaijani lands looted and systematically destroyed during the Armenian occupation.

Russian President Vladimir Putin held a telephone conversation with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on June 24, the Kremlin press service said. The situation involving Azerbaijan and Armenia was a central topic.

The remaining issues are border demarcation between the two former Soviet countries. As well as the issue of re-establishing a trade and transit corridor via Armenia between the rest of Azerbaijan and its Nakhchivan exclave.

Georgia has effectively abandoned its efforts to advance on the membership issue. True, the work on cooperation and various partnership packages, in itself important, continues. But the membership issue itself has been put on the back burner.

With over 90 percent of the vote counted, the 46-year-old journalist and writer’s Civil Contract party held an insurmountable lead of 54-21 percent over the “Armenia” bloc headed by 67-year-old ex-President Robert Kocharyan – a far more overwhelming result than expected.

There are enormous ramifications. There is a real chance no effective or, at best, a weak government could emerge. Though Azerbaijan got back most of its occupied territories, the formal delimitation of the border with Armenia would take a solid government in Yerevan with a mandate to do so. It might be impossible to put a finality to the 30-year war or open trade routes in the absence of one