True, we’ve been here before with the media reporting that a solution to the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the disputed territory of Nagorno Karabakh might finally be in sight, but the possibility for peace is once again resurfacing. However, such hopes have always been dashed at the last moment, but what makes the situation different this time round is the active involvement of Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in convening a meeting between his Armenia and Azerbaijani counterparts tomorrow in Moscow. RFE/RL has more.
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev will meet his Armenian and Azerbaijani counterparts in Moscow on November 2 for potentially decisive talks on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, it was officially announced on Wednesday.
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Medvedev announced his initiative following upbeat statements on Karabakh peace prospects made by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. In an October 7 interview with the “Rossiiskaya Gazeta” daily, Lavrov described as “very real” chances for the resolution of the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict. “There remain two or three unresolved issues which need to be agreed upon at the next meetings of the presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan,” he said.
What makes the situation even more interesting is that not only has Turkey welcomed the move, but RFE/RL also reports that Western mediators from the OSCE’s Minsk Group have traveled ahead of the possibly historic meeting. Despite concerns expressed from some quarters regarding Russia’s role, the U.S. is reported to also be hopeful.
U.S. and French mediators will travel to Moscow ahead of Sunday’s meeting of the Armenian and Azerbaijani presidents hosted by Russia, Foreign Minister Eduard Nalbandian announced on Thursday.
Nalbandian said he and his Azerbaijani counterpart Elmar Mammadyarov will meet the American, French as well as Russian diplomats co-chairing the OSCE Minsk Group in the Russian capital on Saturday. He said the co-chairs could also meet Presidents Ilham Aliev and Serzh Sarkisian after their trilateral meeting with Russia’s President Dmitry Medvedev.
Medvedev has initiated the Armenian-Azerbaijani summit amid renewed international hopes for a near-term solution to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. The Russian president and other officials have expressed hope that Aliev and Sarkisian will bridge their remaining differences on a framework peace accord proposed by the Minsk Group.
The Russian initiative has fuelled talk of Moscow seeking to sideline the West in the Karabakh peace process as part of its efforts to boost its influence in the South Caucasus after the recent war with Georgia.
However, the initiative was welcomed by the United States on Wednesday. “We are pleased by this initiative that Moscow is undertaking. We hope that the initiative succeeds. We are monitoring it very closely,” U.S. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack told reporters.
The warming of relations between Azerbaijan and Russia is not new. Indeed, many regional analysts have long been noting the strengthening of ties between the two countries. In July, for example, the Caucasus Editor for the Institute for War & Peace Reporting (IWPR) and author of Black Garden: Armenia and Azerbaijan through Peace and War, Thomas de Waal, made a guest post on Steve LeVine’s blog.
Once Vladimir Putin came to power, Aliyev made it a strategic priority to rebuild relations with Russia. Aliyev was very successfully at charming the Putin Kremlin, and his daughter, Sevil, made a useful marriage with a well-connected Moscow Azerbaijani, Mahmud Mammadquliyev. The elite-level relationship has deepened under his son, Ilham Aliyev.
Medvedev, with his background as former chairman of Gazprom, the Russian natural gas giant, now speaks the same language of money and energy as the Azerbaijani elite. They must find it a relief not to have to bother with all that talk of democratization and human rights that enters conversations with Western politicians.
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Asked to name the three nations friendliest to Azerbaijan, 89% of Musabekov’s respondents unsurprisingly named Turkey. But Russia came in second place with a 20% vote of approval, well ahead of the United States, which was named by 5.7%, just behind Iran and on the same level as Ukraine.
This suggests that, on the street level, Russia and Russians remain popular with ordinary Azeris. They are still on the same wavelength in a way that Americans or Europeans will never be.
The Wall Street Journal also reported the same last week. Such a development is significant given Armenia’s traditional reliance on Russia for its security. Indeed, some Karabakh analysts maintain that it was Moscow’s backing for Yerevan that helped secure victory in the conflict which effectively ended with the 1994 ceasefire agreement.
Until now, Azerbaijan’s leadership has pursued a canny “all options open” foreign policy, but one that was firmly oriented toward Europe and the broader West. Its former president, Heydar Aliyev, daringly challenged Russia’s self-proclaimed sphere of influence long before Georgia did, by building the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline and a parallel line for natural gas that directly reach Western markets. Baku actively lobbied for U.S., NATO and EU involvement in the region to provide for Caspian maritime security and to help solve its “frozen” conflict with Armenia over the territory of Nagorno-Karabakh.
But Azerbaijanis were disappointed by the West’s reaction to this summer’s events in next-door Georgia, and the growing inclination in many European capitals to capitulate to Russia in the broader Black Sea region. While Russian tanks menaced Tbilisi, Baku began exporting oil through Russia and Iran. Now Moscow, a longtime friend of Armenia’s in the Karabakh conflict, has begun quietly supporting Azerbaijan’s position in the hopes of securing a deal for all of Azerbaijan’s available natural gas exports. In the absence of incentives or even attention from the West, Baku is seriously considering a major foreign-policy reversal.
Regarding the details of any framework agreement, nothing has been made public so far, but the so-called Madrid Principles are believed to be based on those which have long been in circulation and which also formed the basis for the International Crisis Groups’s recent recommendations on Karabakh.
(a) security guarantees and the deployment of international peacekeepers;
(b) withdrawal of Armenian and Nagorno-Karabakh forces from all occupied territories adjacent to Nagorno-Karabakh, with special modalities for Kelbajar and Lachin;
(c) return of displaced persons;
(d) Nagorno-Karabakh’s final status to be determined eventually by a vote, with an interim status to be settled on until that time; and
(e) reopening of all transport and trade routes
Nevertheless, while Armenia is prepared to compromise it is uncertain whether Azerbaijan is. In 2006, for example, peace talks in France collapsed when the two sides could not agree upon a timetable for the removal of Armenian forces from Kelbajar. Nevertheless, it is believed that Azerbaijan agreed to the idea of a new referendum being held in the self-declared republic.
The presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan have accepted the idea of enabling the people of Nagorno-Karabakh to decide their status in a referendum but disagree on other, less significant issues, the Armenian Foreign Ministry said late Monday.
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“Those items over which the presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan continue to disagree do not include a referendum; that concept has been agreed to by the presidents,” it said. “The area of disagreement between the presidents has to do with the sequence in which the consequences of the military conflict are removed.”
Aliev and Kocharian reportedly disagreed, among other things, on a time frame for Armenian withdrawal from Kelbajar, one of the seven occupied Azerbaijani districts sandwiched between Karabakh and Armenia, during their previous meeting held at the Rambouillet castle outside Paris in February.
“In an attempt to resolve this remaining area of disagreement, a proposal was made by the co-chairs after Rambouillet. This proposal was accepted by Armenia in Bucharest. Azerbaijan rejected it,” the Foreign Ministry said without elaborating.
However, it should be pointed out that such a referendum requires that Azerbaijan’s Constitution is amended. Currently, referendums can only be held nationwide and not in select locations.
Constitution of the Azerbaijan Republic
With modifications introduced to the Constitution as a result of Referendum held on 24 August 2002.
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Article 3. Questions solved by way of nation-wide voting—referendum
I. People of Azerbaijan may solve any questions involving their rights and interests by way of referendum.
II. The following questions may be solved only by way of referendum:
1) acceptance of the Constitution of the Azerbaijan Republic and introduction of amendments thereto;
2) change of state borders of the Azerbaijan Republic.
There is also the issue of the width of the Lachin corridor, the strategic lifeline linking Armenia to Karabakh. Nationalists in Armenia and Karabakh have long been concerned by what in recent years has become an exodus of settlers from the region.
Five years ago, Kashatagh’s population was estimated by local officials to be approximately 15,000. Before the Karabakh war, the three Azerbaijani regions of Lachin, Kubatly and Zangelan had 129,000 residents, with over 60,000 Azerbaijanis and ethnic Kurds living in the Lachin region alone.
Officials in the administrative town of Lachin, now renamed Berdzor, are reluctant to admit out loud that these reports are true, but privately confirm that the number of settlers is far below that officially quoted. None estimate the population at over 6,000 and most soon forget to maintain the official line that most of the new settlers are refugees from Azerbaijan. Instead, they admit that most are from Armenia proper.
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But, since 2004, residents of Lachin say that government money is being reduced and people are moving away. Even Robert Matevosian, head of resettlement for Kashatagh, admits, “Recent reports [highlighting out-migration] are raising various issues and concerns that do exist.”
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The most likely reason is not hard to spot. In the ongoing peace negotiations over the future of Nagorny Karabakh, the Armenian government seems committed to returning almost all of the seven territories surrounding Karabakh currently under Armenian control. In the event of a deal, Lachin is set to remain as the crucial land link between Armenia and Karabakh – but it remains uncertain how wide the “Lachin Corridor” would actually be.
This is bad news for those Armenian nationalists who want to resettle the Kashatagh region – although it will encourage those who support a peace settlement as it means relatively few Armenians will have to make way for returning Azerbaijanis under a future deal.
But if Azerbaijan might seem unwilling to compromise — and even if it is, it has still not prepared its population for the idea of a peace deal — there might also be problems in Armenia. This week, nationalist elements from within the team of opposition leader Levon Ter-Petrossian made it clear they were against the idea of such a peace agreement with Azerbaijan even if the former president has suspended activities apparently in the hope of one.
A group of prominent opposition figures and intellectuals announced on Thursday the launch of a new movement that will campaign against Armenian territorial concessions to Azerbaijan.”
The leaders of the Miatsum (Unification) National Initiative voiced their strong opposition against the return of any of the seven Azerbaijani districts around Nagorno-Karabakh that were fully or partly occupied by Armenian forces during the 1991-1994 war.”
Armenian withdrawal from virtually all of those districts is a key element of the current and past peace proposals made by international mediators. Like its predecessors, the administration of President Serzh Sarkisian seems ready to trade them for international recognition of Karabakh’s secession from Azerbaijan.”
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Among the signatories to the statement is Zhirayr Sefilian, a prominent veteran of the Karabakh war and government critic who has long campaigned for a firm Armenian stand in the conflict. Speaking at a news conference in Yerevan, he and other organizers of the movement, among them an opposition parliamentarian, would not say just how they will try to thwart a compromise deal with Azerbaijan”
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Sefilian has publicly disagreed with Ter-Petrosian’s recent decision to suspend anti-government rallies in Yerevan which the ex-president linked with the renewed international push for Karabakh peace. But it is not clear if the HKH leader to hold his own rallies in the coming weeks.
And somewhat ironically, Armenia Now even reports on speculation that the nationalist Armenian Revolutionary Federation — Dashnaktsutyun (ARF-D), part of the coalition government, might even go into opposition and form a new alliance with the previous president, Robert Kocharian.
South Caucasus analyst Victor Yakubyan says that “the upcoming negotiations in Moscow will pass against the background of activation of forces in Armenia.”
The analyst predicts that if Sargsyan agreed to an escalation of negotiations in Moscow and approved the plan and terms of withdrawal of Armenian troops from the security zone surrounding Nagorno-Karabakh, the internal political field in Armenia will totally transform to engender a new opposition front.”
Some also predict that the speeded up negotiations on Nagorno-Karabakh might cause representatives of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (Dashnaktsutyun) to withdraw from the governing coalition and might also return second president Robert Kocharyan to the political arena and unite Dashnaktsutyun and Kocharyan.”
However, many consider that Russia’s involvement in any new push for peace might be pivotal. Ria Novosti already quotes a Kremlin source as saying that it “would be ready to back a settlement that satisfied all parties concerned, and if a compromise is reached, it can guarantee it.” Time will tell if Armenia’s regional isolation can finally be ended with peace coming to the South Caucasus, but that will all depend on Azerbaijan.
Until now, oil revenue has seen the Azerbaijani military budget increase considerably and even if the Armenian military is considered stronger than the other side, Yerevan will still need to increase its spending. However, as The Armenian Economist notes, the country is unable to sustain an arms race with such a wealthy neighbour.
Armenia (population 3 million) faces tremendous pressure to increase its military budget. However, given the size of its economy, it is not in a position to engage in an arms race with its neighbors. Turkey’s (population 71 million) military budget exceeds the country’s entire GDP. As for Azerbaijan (population 8 million), the other Turkic state, its defense expenditures are as large as the government’s entire budget.
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Rather than expanding the defense budget, a more effective approach would be to spend more on education and health care. In the long run, it is likely that an expansion in investment in human capital could be far more effective in contributing to the country’s security and prosperity than anything else the government can do.
This appears to be what Azerbaijan is counting on — the inability for Armenia to keep in step with its military expenditure.
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