The OSCE Minsk group has not finished its work, claim the Co-Chairs. Today they announced that the Armenian and Azeri Foreign Ministers will meet in Moscow on October 6.

 

 

[…]

 

Bernard Fassier, French Co-Chair says that he didn’t announce in Baku that Karabakh cannot participate in the negotiation process at present. He didn’t answer the same question in Yerevan either. He didn’t exclude the possibility that peaceful troops may be located in vacated territories by 2006.

 

Tomorrow the Co-Chairs will leave for Karabakh. Mr. Bryza assured that the Co-Chairs are of the same opinion on all questions, and there is no discord among them. “I can assure that the Karabakh conflict settlement has not a military solution,” said Matthew Bryza. Bernard Fassier said that unless Armenians and Azeris are ready to live side by side as neighbours, the Karabakh conflict won’t be settled. As for the time when the conflict will find its final solution, Mr. Fassier said, “Let’s live and see.”

Personally, I also view Chirac’s recent visit to Armenia and his planned trip to Azerbaijan in this context as well. Perhaps we should also view reports that much of the territory outside of Lachin is being depopulated — as I wrote about in articles for Eurasianet and the Institute for War & Peace Reporting (IWPR) — in this light too.

 

 

After the new U.S. co-chair of the OSCE Minsk Group, Matthew Bryza, revealed details of the proposed framework peace deal to resolve the Karabakh conflict last week, much to the annoyance of the Armenian President, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has now released more details. Actually, we already knew what was being discussed, but this is the first time that American and Armenian officials have confirmed them openly, and in so much detail.

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.

 

[…]

 

“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.

The full news item can be read here.

RFE/RL reports that the ongoing process to find a peaceful settlement to the Nagorno Karabakh conflict continues. In particular, it says that this month’s meeting between the the U.S. President and Ilham Aliyev could represent new moves by Washington to put pressure on the Azerbaijani leader to accept a concessionary deal in the works since late 2004.

Bush’s decision to receive Aliev on April 28 came as a surprise given his administration’s unofficial policy of keeping the White House off limits for foreign leaders with poor human rights and democracy records. 

 

Armenia’s Robert Kocharian is believed to have not paid an official visit to Washington throughout his eight-year presidency for that reason. His foreign minister, Vartan Oskanian, has hinted that Bush’s invitation may be part of U.S. efforts to get Aliev to accept the Minsk Group’s most recent peace plan. It reportedly envisages a referendum in Karabakh that would almost certainly legitimize Armenian control over the disputed region. The peace formula seems largely acceptable to Yerevan.

Those resolutions are particularly damning for Armenia and urge the immediate withdrawal of troops from Kelbajar, Zangelan, Aghdam and other territories under Armenian control. They also affirm the territorial integrity of the Republic of Azerbaijan. As I’ve said before, it looks like the best deal on the table is that which was discussed in Rambouillet in February.

Otherwise, and although it could be a bluff, Azerbaijan appears to be preparing for war.

One has to hope that Bush puts enough pressure on Aliyev to prevent that possibility. Certainly, new proposals that might see another meeting between the Armenian and Azerbaijani Presidents this year perhaps represent the last chance for peace between the two republics and a solution to the conflict over Nagorno Karabakh.

In a related development, Azerbaijan’s Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov said that he was presented with unspecified “new proposals” on Karabakh during a meeting in Washington with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice last week. He told Trend news agency that Baku will respond to those proposals during the upcoming visit to the conflict zone by Steven Mann, the Minsk Group’s U.S. co-chair. 

 

According to France’s chief Karabakh negotiator, Bernard Fassier, the proposals were put forward by Rice on behalf of the Minsk Group troika. Visiting Baku on Tuesday, Fassier said the co-chairs have drawn up a peace accord that enables the parties to “realize their hopes by 80 percent.”

 

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov also spoke of “new proposals” to resolve the conflict after holding talks with Oskanian in Moscow last Friday. He declined to disclose their content.

The full report can be read online here, while the 1993 UN Security Council Resolutions on Karabakh are here.

RFE/RL’s Armenia Service reports that the new European Envoy on the South Caucasus has again underscored the importance the EU places on resolving the long-standing conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the mainly-Armenian populated territory of Nagorno Karabakh. Speaking to reporters after meeting the Armenian Foreign Minister Vartan Oskanian, Peter Semneby again stated that there is a “window of opportunity” still open this year.

Semneby, who arrived in Yerevan from Baku, said the existing status quo hurts both conflicting parties and the region as a whole. He also reaffirmed the EU’s intention to play a greater role in international efforts to broker a compromise settlement.

 

[…]

 

“I conveyed [to Semneby] our view that contrary to various speculations made after [the Armenian-Azerbaijani summit in] Rambouillet, the peace process is alive,” Oskanian said for his part. “We believe that there are still possibilities for continuing and making additional progress in the process.”

According to the report, what happens next depends on the outcome of a visit to Washington by Oskanian’s Azerbaijani counterpart later in the week where he will also meet with the OSCE Minsk Group’s US Chair Steve Mann. Oskanian will be in Moscow around the same time. Unfortunately, however, it still does not look as though Azerbaijan is willing to make concessions in negotiations.

“If they register a convergence of views, there will probably be a visit to the region by the co-chairs, which may be followed by a meeting of the [Armenian and Azerbaijani] foreign ministers,” said Oskanian. “But all of this depends on the results of the upcoming Mammadyarov-Mann meeting.”

 

Mammadyarov’s deputy Araz Azimov, who was also in Washington last week, indicated at the weekend that Baku remains adamant in rejecting a Minsk Group peace plan that would reportedly legitimize Armenian control over Karabakh. “America should understand and Armenia should remember that the Azerbaijani state not only will disagree with the partition of the lands, but also will prevent it,” Azimov told the official AzerTaj news agency.

Meanwhile, RFE/RL also carries a story from AFP reporting that Turkey still stands by Azerbaijan in the long-running dispute, and it would appear that both countries are relying on the fact that within the next 2-10 years Armenia will be isolated in the region and unable to match increased military spending by Azerbaijan. Unfortunately, it would appear that both are likely to be true.

Next year, Azerbaijan’s military budget is set to hit $1 billion, the size of Armenia’s entire state budget this year.

The dispute over the ethnic Armenian enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh “should be resolved within the framework of the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan,” Sezer told reporters after meeting his Azerbaijani counterpart Ilham Aliev. This is “in line with international norms,” Sezer added.

 

[…]

 

Both Turkey and Azerbaijan have severed ties with Armenia, closing borders and imposing an economic blockade on Yerevan as a result of the Karabakh dispute. Ankara is under European Union pressure to normalize ties with Armenia but worries that reconciliatory moves sought by the bloc may damage its alliance with Azerbaijan.

Recent news carried by Baku Today also highlights the introduction in Azerbaijan of a new law on mobilization for war. Difficult to say if this is coincidental or whether it really is part of Aliyev’s voiced intention to re-take Karabakh and the surrounding territories by military means if a peaceful solution cannot be found. What isn’t clear is what constitutes an “invasion” and if it can be applied retrospectively.

According to the law, in event of a real armed attack or the threat of a military invasion, the president will immediately declare partial or universal mobilization.

 

People in the reserves and those who are not eligible to participate in the military draft could be sent to into the armed forces and other special formations to work in civil positions.

Some sources indicate that the stumbling blocks encountered during recent talks in Paris between the Armenian and Azerbaijani Presidents can be considered to be the date for an eventual withdrawal of Armenian forces from Kelbajar and the status of Karabakh itself. The latter is of course what the conflict was all about in the first place, but it would appear that Azerbaijan is not ready to recognize the importance of the right of a people to self-determination over territorial integrity.

So, it would appear that on the one hand, Azerbaijan doesn’t understand the need to compromise and believe in the territorial integrity of their country while many of those involved even in conflict resolution and peacebuilding initiatives in Armenia don’t appear to understand that for Azerbaijan to officially cede Karabakh, Armenians must be willing to withdraw from five or six possible regions out of seven surrounding the territory which were only intended as a “buffer zone” anyway.

So what does this mean?

If Azerbaijan builds up its military at a faster pace than Armenia which seems inevitable I think there is only one likelihood. That is, there could be war within the next 5-10 years and I don’t think that anyone should take that lightly because next time it will involve proper armies and possibly an outright declaration of war between Armenia and Azerbaijan. And while the outcome might be uncertain, one thing is.

Thousands will die and the resulting peace deal would probably be what is on the table now. In the worst case scenerio I believe that Armenia could lose Karabakh.

The Armenian government says that it requires only three things in a peace deal with Azerbaijan. That is, Karabakh would be separate from Azerbaijan, it should have a land border with Armenia, and that international security guarantees are in place. I tend to agree with that position, and in the meantime would suggest that both Armenian and Azerbaijani alike read Tom de Waal’s Myths and Realities of the Karabakh War.

The failure to resolve the conflict over the mountainous territory of Nagorny Karabakh remains the most serious problem in the south Caucasus, blighting the peaceful development of the whole region.

 

Almost nine years after Armenians and Azerbaijanis signed the ceasefire agreement that halted the war in 1994, and ten years after the first United Nations resolution on the conflict on April 30, 1993 the dispute is no nearer resolution.

 

One reason it remains unsettled is that the combatants have fostered myths and propaganda, which reinforce their – mistaken – perception that they are the guiltless victims of the conflict, while the other side is the dangerous aggressor.

As most of you know, de Waal is the author of Black Garden: Armenia and Azerbaijan through Peace and War, and not only did I accompany him for some of his fieldwork, but I also interviewed him on his research soon afterwards.

[…] why was I interested in writing a book on Karabagh? Well, I had been to the region a couple of times and was aware that there really was nothing in English, or in any language for that matter, that looked at the conflict from both sides. Instead, there were quite a few propagandist books, or one-sided books to be kinder, which looked at the conflict from only one perspective. Both sides were living in alternate realities and it was an intellectual and personal challenge to go back to the beginning of the conflict in 1988 to see if I could come up with an outsider’s view of why the conflict started and what’s happened since. I suppose that if you can understand the symptoms of the disease, you can possibly find a cure. The problem with Karabagh has been that too many people have suggested solutions for the conflict without really understanding the symptoms.

The full interview can be read online here.

Road to the Sarsang Reservoir, Nagorno Karabakh © Onnik James Krikorian 2001

RFE/RL once again confirms that this time round, there really is the chance of a peace deal between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the disputed mainly Armenian inhabited territory of Nagorno Karabakh.

“Yes, there is a possibility of a Karabakh settlement in the course of this year,” said Steven Mann, the U.S. co-chair of the OSCE Minsk Group. He added that an agreement will be signed “this year or within the next hundred years,” indicating that the peace process has reached a make-or-break point.

However:

Bernard Fassier, the group’s French co-chair, clarified that the conflicting parties are more likely to sign a framework agreement on “the basic principles” of the peaceful settlement. Both he and Mann stressed that the successful outcome of the negotiations is still not a forgone conclusion.

 

[…]

 

Senior Armenian government sources have told RFE/RL that the two sides are close to a peace deal that will enable the population of Karabakh to determine its status at a referendum to be held in 10-15 years time. They claimed that the vote will follow the liberation of all but one of the occupied Azerbaijani districts and the reopening of Armenia’s borders with Azerbaijan and Turkey.

Of course, the opposition in both Armenia and Azerbaijan don’t like the news:

Some Armenian opposition leaders have already rejected that formula. One of them, Vazgen Manukian, called it “absolutely unacceptable” on Thursday. “We give away those territories and there will be a referendum in 10 or 15 years time,” he told RFE/RL. “What would we gain from that? I don’t know.”

 

“Karabakh’s status must be determined now, not after 10 or 15 years,” he said. “Armenia and Azerbaijan must declare that they want a referendum to be held in Karabakh now and will accept its results.”

 

The reported settlement has also been denounced by opposition figures in Azerbaijan who believe that Baku would never stand a chance of winning back Karabakh in that case.

The full article can be read online here.

Meanwhile, RFE/RL also reports that Armenia and Turkey have been holding secret talks in an undisclosed European city in order to “normalize relations.” According to RFE/RL and other sources, these talks can also be closely linked to the possibility of an imminent Karabakh peace deal.

Diplomatic sources in Yerevan told RFE/RL last week that Armenia and Azerbaijan have already agreed on the main points of a Karabakh peace accord which they said could be signed by the end of this year or at the beginning of next. They said the lifting of the Turkish blockade is one of those points.

That full article can be read online here.