Azeri paper slams OSCE mediators for not condemning Armenia as aggressor

Zerkalo, Baku
25 Nov 04

Excerpt from R. Mirgadirov and M. Yasaroglu report by Azerbaijani
newspaper Zerkalo on 25 November headlined “The stances of Armenia
and the co-chairs coincide” and subheaded “Both are against discussing
the Karabakh problem outside the OSCE Minsk Group”

The 59th session of the UN General Assembly in New York discussed
the situation in the occupied territories of Azerbaijan on 24 November.

[Passage omitted: debates in the UN on Azerbaijan’s draft proposal
on the Nagornyy Karabakh conflict]

In essence, Armenian officials do not even try to hide their concern
regarding the discussion of the Karabakh issue outside the OSCE Minsk
Group. The vice-speaker of the Armenian parliament, Tigran Torosyan,
was rather outspoken on this issue when he presented the outcomes of
the 17 November Paris session of the PACE [Parliamentary Assembly of
the Council of Europe] political committee. He said that there are
no obstacles to including the Karabakh issue in the agenda of the
PACE winter session.

He said that the Nagornyy Karabakh resolution which was passed at
the emergency session of the PACE political committee contained some
points which were unfavourable and had to be changed. In particular,
they include a sentence which turns the previous call to the
Azerbaijani authorities to establish ties with Nagornyy Karabakh’s
political leadership into a call to establish ties between the two
communities. In this connection, the head of Armenia’s PACE delegation
said it is important to conduct active work in this regard.

So, it is time to answer the question why Armenia would lose out if the
Karabakh conflict is discussed outside the framework of the OSCE Minsk
Group. It is very simple. The OSCE, including the Minsk Group which it
has created, is tackling the practical aspects of settling the Karabakh
conflict on the basis of the mandate, or more precisely, the four UN
Security Council resolutions on the issue. The co-chairs of the OSCE,
namely Russia, America and France, have long and well forgotten about
the basic demands of those resolutions and are in effect engaged in
“creative activities” by proposing various solutions to the conflict.

But the most important point is that since the Minsk Group is a
temporarily created OSCE structure to act as a mediator to resolve the
Karabakh conflict, it is unable to give an internationally recognized
political and legal assessment of the actions of the sides to the
conflict.

This situation absolutely suits Armenia. When proposing various
solutions to the conflict, the OSCE co-chairs always hint that
Azerbaijan will at any rate have to make major concessions, considering
the “current realities”, that is to put it simply, the occupation of
a chunk of Azerbaijani territory by Armenia. They did not even hold
the fact of the occupation of an independent state against Armenia.

Now, with a cease-fire regime which is more than 10 years old, when
the Karabakh conflict is discussed in organizations outside the reach
of the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs, it becomes necessary to answer the
foremost question: who has occupied 16 per cent of Azerbaijan, which
is in itself a flagrant violation of international legal norms? And
every time, regardless of sympathies or antipathies, the international
community has to unequivocally reply – Armenia! Consequently, this
results in the condemnation by the international community – be it the
UN or PACE – of the fact of aggression against a sovereign state and of
the occupation of its territories with all the ensuing ramifications.

Incidentally, such a course of events does not suit the interests of
the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs. A clear definition by the international
community of the fact of aggression and occupation of territories
by Armenia deprives the co-chairs, who have their own geopolitical
interests in the region, of the room for manoeuvre. Because in
this case it will become difficult to “pressure” the victim of the
aggression and demand that in order to resolve the conflict it make
concessions that would go against its sovereignty.