AZERBAIJAN COULD NOT SECURE THE ADOPTION OF ANTI-ARMENIAN RESOLUTION IN UN
PanArmenian News
Nov 25 2004
The General Assembly has considered necessary the preparation of
compromising variant of the resolution.
Yesterday at the 59th General Assembly meeting on the initiative of
Azerbaijan was considered the issue of the situation in the regions
which are controlled by Nagorno-Karabakh Army. As a result of the
discussion the draft resolution of official Baku by the provocative
name “On the Situation in Occupied Territories of Azerbaijan” was
not put to the vote. So, Azerbaijan could not obtain the UN Security
Council’s adoption of the resolution condemning the Armenians for
creating a security zone around Nagorno-Karabakh.
/PanARMENIAN.Net/ Azerbaijan did not resolve to demand the project
to be put to the vote, realizing that this edition of the resolution
would not be accepted. Though Ilham Aliev had promised that in any case
official Baku would not be contented with the consideration and would
insist on the adoption of the suggested project, he did not keep his
word given to the journalists. Considering the chances, Azerbaijan
has accepted the inevitable of moving some important amendments in
the text. The chairman announced that it was necessary to work on
the resolution text and closed the meeting without specifying the
date when the document is to be put to the vote. The representative
of Azerbaijan did not contradict.
In fact happened exactly what Vardan Oskanyan said. On the eve of
the consideration the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Armenia showed
the readiness of official Yerevan to take part in the working out
the compromising variant of the resolution. Oskanyan declared that
Armenia would not have anything against the fact that the document
might contain the initiative of creating an expert group within the
OSCE which would be empowered to investigate the real situation in the
region of security zone. It is important to note that a resolution
containing such appeal will not call the competence of Minsk Group
into question. It is a question of vital importance for us. Azerbaijan
presses towards getting new intermediaries to the settlement in order
to destroy the negotiation base created due to the efforts of the
Minsk Group co-Chairs.
At the General Assembly Meeting Armenia succeeded in a very important
point. Armenia could bar the adoption of unilateral document which was
based on information got from unreliable sources. It will be possible
to speak about a substantial diplomatic success of Yerevan in case
if the final edition of the resolution contains not the appraisal but
only the call for inspection of the situation in the area. The visit
of such fact-finding mission to the region may be even beneficial for
Armenia. The inspection will allow proving the fact of occupation of
the regions in the Northern part of Karabakh and the fact of ethnic
purge carried out in those regions.
The countries which have the key role in the UN marginally stood
against the initiative of Azerbaijan even on the first stage of the
consideration. At the Meeting of General Assembly the USA and Russia
gave to understand that Azerbaijan has to express its concern to
the OSCE not to the UN. Of course the Great Powers didn’t support
Azerbaijan not because they support Armenia. They are just not
interested in involving the UN in a process which is easier to control
within the OSCE Minsk Group. However, if we judge by absolute numbers,
it is obvious that the number of countries supporting Azerbaijan in
the UN decreases every year.
Among the big countries only Turkey and Pakistan support Azerbaijan.
Pakistan for the present moment remains a member of the Security
Council. And the World Powers oppose the Azerbaijan’s attempts to
involve the UN in the process of the settlement of Karabakh conflict.
This time the initiative of Baku was not supported not only by the
co-Chairs of Minsk Group, but also by other permanent members of
the Security Council, also all the countries of the EU and even some
countries of GUAM and the Organisation of Islamic Conference. For Baku
the denial of support from China and Georgia was amiss. For Armenia
it was a considerable diplomatic success. Formerly Peking and Tbilisi
during any voting on the issue of Karabakh conflict always took the
Azerbaijan’s side. They supposed that in this way they are defending
the priority of the territorial integrity principle. But the Armenian
diplomacy succeeded in convincing the Georgians and the Chinese that
the analogies between Karabakh, Taiwan and Abkhazia are absolutely
not suitable.
If we judge by the voting on the justification of including the issue
of the situation in the security zone in the agenda of the General
Assembly, we see that less than the quarter of the UN member-countries
support Azerbaijan today (42 out of 192). More than a half of the UN
members either voted against or abstained from voting which is almost
the same in this case. 49 countries did not participate in the voting
at all which is also kind of expression of disagreement to the subject
being discussed. Hence it is obvious that Azerbaijan has a very slim
chance to pass a unilateral anti-Armenian resolution in the UN.
24.11.2004, “PanARMENIAN Network” analytical department