Voice of America, DC
Aug 11 2004

International Community Criticizes Nagorno-Karabakh Election

Bill Gasperini

Moscow

The United States and some international organizations have
criticized last Sunday’s local elections in the Azerbaijan’s
breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh, saying it will not help ongoing
negotiations over the status of the enclave. The local elections,
which Nagorno Karabakh officials say could help pave the way for the
region’s international recognition, angered the Azeri government.
The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, which is
sponsoring negotiations to bring peace to the region, said Sunday’s
election in Nagorno-Karabakh, an Armenian-populated province of
Azerbaijan that broke away after a bloody war, was not helpful to the
peace process.

OSCE spokesman in Vienna, Ayhan Evrensel, says that any lasting
solution must come from within.

“What the OSCE through the co-chairs is trying [to do] is to
facilitate a solution, to bring the sides together and discuss about
the issues,” he said. “It has to come from both sides.”

Under the auspices of the OSCE, a group of countries forming the so
called Minsk group, has been talking with Armenia and Azerbaijan in
an effort to resolve the conflict. They have made numerous proposals
over the last decade, but little headway.

The U.S. State Department said the elections have no effect on the
peace process. In a written statement, the State Department said,
“Obviously we don’t recognize Nagorno-Karabakh as an independent
country. The future status of Nagorno Karabakh, the State Department
said, is a matter of negotiation in the Minsk process.

The United States, along with France and Russia are leading the
negotiation process.

Azerbaijan lost control of Nagorno-Karabakh and seven adjoining
districts after a six-year conflict with Armenia, which broke out in
1988 and claimed more than 30,000 lives. It ended with a cease-fire
agreement in 1994, and left Armenian forces in control of the enclave
and the buffer zone around it.

The United Nations Security Council has denounced the occupation of
Azerbaijani lands and has demanded that Armenia withdraw its forces.
With the exception of Armenia, no nation recognizes Nagorno-Karabakh
as an independent political entity.

Nagorno-Karabakh authorities defended Sunday’s elections as an
expression of democracy in the enclave. But authorities in Azerbaijan
reacted strongly to this assertion, calling the elections illegal
because they were held outside their jurisdiction.

Officials in the Azeri capital Baku said people uprooted during the
war over the enclave were unable to vote, and that the elections
could not be called representative.

While the cease-fire generally holds the two countries at an uneasy
peace, shooting incidents still occur periodically along the
cease-fire line not far from Nagorno-Karabakh’s capital city,
Stepanakert.