Institute for War and Peace Reporting
Dec 22 2004

NEW PLAYERS ENTER KARABAKH PEACE PROCESS

Will the involvement of the United Nations and the Parliamentary
Assembly of the Council of Europe help or hinder the cause of peace
in Nagorny Karabakh?

By Thomas de Waal in London

A number of initiatives on the Nagorny Karabakh conflict are either
adding life to a moribund peace process, or bringing in outside
agencies with no expertise on the issue and making resolution more
difficult – depending on whom you talk to.

In the last six months, the main mediators have become more active
again. The diplomats of the three countries, which are the co-chairs of
the “Minsk Group” of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in

Europe (France, Russia and the United States), have revived regular
meetings with the Armenian and Azerbaijani foreign ministers. A series
of meetings that began in Prague were not formal negotiations as such
but the Minsk Group mediators hope they will lead to more serious
talks next year.

At the same time, other international players have entered the field.
Last month, Azerbaijan managed to raise the issue of Karabakh at the
United Nations General Assembly for the first time in many years.
Next month, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe in
Strasbourg will debate a draft resolution on the conflict. Earlier
this year, the Pentagon even took a brief interest in Karabakh.

All this is perhaps not surprising, given that ten years after a
ceasefire was signed between Armenian and Azerbaijani forces, no
final peace deal has been struck. In Azerbaijan, which continues to
bear greater pain of the non-resolution of the conflict in terms of
land occupied and people displaced, the sense of urgency is greater.

But the two parties offer very different views about what the
involvement of other international organisations means.

Speaking at the Royal Institute for International Affairs in London
on December 13, Azerbaijani president Ilham Aliev said that Baku was
trying to ensure that the world did not forget about the Karabakh
conflict.

“International organisations – and not only the one which directly
deals with this issue, the Minsk Group – such as the European Union,

the Council of Europe and the United Nations, can and should play a
more active role,” the president said.

Aliev said that he was committed to a peaceful resolution of the
dispute but issued what sounded like a veiled threat, saying,
“We are committed to the peace process but our patience has limits.”

The new rush of activity has a lot to do with the appointment in
Azerbaijan of a much more dynamic foreign minister, Elmar Mamedyarov,
in April of this year. A fluent English-speaker like his Armenian
counterpart Vartan Oskanian, Mamedyarov has shown much more initiative
than his predecessors.

Speaking to IWPR by telephone from Baku, Mamedyarov said that he had
written letters to the UN, the Council of Europe and to EU foreign
policy chief Javier Solana amongst others.

“Azerbaijan has made it clear numerous times that we are committed
to a peace process run by the Minsk Group and by the co-chairs,”
the minister said. “But in the last negotiations we have been stuck
in an exchange of views within the Minsk Group.”

“We want to keep this conflict within the eyes of the international
community.”

Central to Azerbaijani strategy has been an attempt to get a new
UN resolution on Karabakh, picking up on four resolutions that were
passed when the conflict was active in 1993-94. The resolutions all
call for Armenian forces to leave Azerbaijani territory – although
they also contain calls on both sides to cease fire, which were not
heeded at the time.

The Armenians have called the resort to the UN a “mistake”. Armenian
foreign minister Oskanian told IWPR in written answers to questions
that “Azerbaijan cannot try to negotiate on the one hand, and
then on the other hand, try to isolate this or that aspect of the
entire package of issues and push them individually in this or that
international forum”.

While saying he did not wish to exclude any serious interest in the
dispute, Oskanian sounded a warning note, saying, “We think we need
to stay within the tried forums, where information and experience has
accumulated, and focus on the real issue instead of trying to divert
attention to side issues.”

The UN debate was postponed indefinitely on November 23 after an
intervention by US ambassador Susan Moore on behalf of the three
OSCE co-chairs.

In a November 22 interview with Radio Liberty, the US co-chairman
Steve Mann did not explicitly criticise the UN initiative but implied
he doubted it would help the peace process. “The important thing… is
that this depends in the first instance on the parties to the conflict
themselves. There must be political will in Armenia and Azerbaijan
to settle this,” he said.

One spin-off from the UN initiative, however, is likely to be
a fact-finding mission under the aegis of the OSCE to the seven
“occupied territories” of Azerbaijan that are fully or partially under
Armenian control and are located outside the disputed territory of
Nagorny Karabakh.

The Azerbaijanis say they want to have reports that Armenian settlers
are being settled in these territories checked. Oskanian said that he
had no problem with this, saying, “We welcome this OSCE Minsk Group
fact-finding mission and will facilitate their work.”

Armenians have also reacted sharply to a draft resolution due to be
put before the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe at
the end of next month.

The resolution was drafted by its original rapporteur British member
of parliament Terry Davis and finished by his colleague David Atkinson
after Davis became secretary general of the parliamentary assembly
in August. To the anger of the Armenians, the document currently
views the dispute as it is seen in Baku – as an inter-state conflict
between Armenia and Azerbaijan – rather than the way Yerevan regards
it: as a fight for self-determination by the Armenians of Karabakh.

The resolution states, for example, that “separatist forces are still
in control of the Nagorno-Karabakh region” and warns the Armenians that
“the occupation of foreign territory by a member state constitutes
a grave violation of that state’s obligations as a member of the
Council of Europe”.

In an interview in London last week, Atkinson told IWPR that he saw
the PACE initiative as “introducing a parliamentary dimension” into
the peace process, “on the grounds that if you involve the elected
representatives of the parties concerned, practical politicians
elected on the basis that we represent our constituencies, they can
come forward and help in a process that has eluded resolution”.

Atkinson said the PACE initiative had not been coordinated with
the Minsk Group, but that he did not want to undermine the OSCE
negotiations. He added, however, that “I’m hoping that all sides meet
and see a way forward where the Minsk process has failed”.

Atkinson, who took over as rapporteur in September, said he had
made only one substantial change to the draft resolution, by adding
Article 9 which “calls on the government of Azerbaijan to establish
contacts with the political representatives of both communities from
the Nagorno-Karabakh region regarding the future status of the region”.

Hitherto, the government in Baku has consistently refused to hold
talks with the Karabakh Armenians and only negotiates directly with
the government in Yerevan.

The rapporteur himself remains a lifetime vice-president of the
organisation Christian Solidarity Worldwide, headed by British peer
Baroness Cox, which has a long record of support for the Karabakh
Armenians. He himself visited Karabakh on the Armenian side in 1992.
He said the Azerbaijanis knew about this and had not objected.

The draft resolution was strongly criticised in a letter to Atkinson
by Vladimir Kazimirov, the veteran Russian mediator who negotiated
the 1994 ceasefire. It was dated December 3 and published by the
Russian Regnum news agency on December 17.

Kazimirov said the draft gave a very selective history of the conflict
and said it was clearly biased in favour of Azerbaijan and therefore
harmful to the prospects of peaceful resolution.

“The Hippocratic oath, ‘do no harm’ to the negotiation process, is
absolutely appropriate here, as each side will for sure use any bias
in its own interests,” Kazimirov wrote.

An upsurge of international interest shows that the unsolved Karabakh
conflict is at least not forgotten. The very polarised attitudes to
the new initiatives suggest that progress in actually achieving a
resolution remains as far off as ever.

Thomas de Waal is IWPR’s Caucasus Editor.