Agency WPS
DEFENSE and SECURITY (Russia)
February 9, 2005, Wednesday

ARMENIA LEFT WITHOUT ALLIES

SOURCE: Nezavisimaya Gazeta, February 7, 2005, p. 11

by Viktoria Panfilova

RESOLUTION OF THE PARLIAMENTARY ASSEMBLY ON KARABAKH IS PUTTING
ARMENIA IN A TIGHT CORNER

Foreign ministers of Armenia (Vardan Oskanjan) and Azerbaijan (Elmar
Mamedjarov) will meet in Prague to discuss the Nagorno-Karabakh
problem on March 2. Most observers believe that the meeting of the
diplomats representing warring parties will take place in the
situation favoring Azerbaijan. Meeting of the Parliamentary Assembly
a week ago passed a resolution on Nagorno-Karabakh, putting official
Yerevan in a difficult position.

The Strasbourg Resolution based on the report made by David Atkinson
(Great Britain) upset Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh but elated
Azerbaijan. To quote President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev, “Baku did
it, the report to the Parliamentary Assembly recognizes the fact of
occupation of a part of Azerbaijani lands by Armenia.” Indeed, this
is the first official international document to call Armenia an
aggressor. Moreover, Atkinson in his comments denied Nagorno-Karabakh
the right to self-determination. “If Azerbaijan agreed to give
Nagorno-Karabakh sovereignty, the European Union will not object,” he
said. “It is clear, however, that the authorities of Azerbaijan will
never give their consent to it.”

A better gift to Azerbaijan cannot be imagined. No wonder official
Yerevan immediately said that, “Atkinson’s report reeks of oil”,
clearly hinting at the interest of the West in the Caspian energy
resources.

Atkinson’s report gives Armenia something to ponder. The failure of
the Armenian diplomacy is clear even though official Yerevan is
speaking of “diplomatic triumph” to muffle it.

Armenian experts are convinced that the fiasco is a corollary of the
faulty concept defining Yerevan’s stand on the matter in the last
several years. Between 1988, when the confrontation began and the
late 1990’s, the problem of Karabakh was viewed on all levels as the
struggle of local Armenians for self-determination and the
self-proclaimed Republic of Nagorno-Karabakh was a fully fledged
participant of all negotiations. Armenia was always an “involved
party” but not a warring party. This state of affairs was specified
by an OSCE document in 1992.

Everything changed when ex-leader of Karabakh Robert Kocharjan became
president of Armenia. Yerevan assumed the role of a participant in
the confrontation, and Karabakh was ousted from the process of
negotiations with Yerevan’s consent. As a result, the entire problem
shifted to the plane of a territorial dispute. Needless to say, all
of that weakened Armenia’s position in the international arena.
Restoration of this position is not going to be easy now.

A certain role was also played by official Baku’s dissatisfaction
with the OSCE Minsk Group, which in Azerbaijan’s opinion had not done
anything at all in its 10 years of existence. In fact, this is not
so. The OSCE Minsk Group and its chairmen (Russia, the United States,
and France) offered variants of settlement more than once, but either
Baku turned them down or other intermediaries objected to a too high
level of Karabakh’s involvement in the talks. It was precisely the
“pro-Armenian” bias of the OSCE Minsk Group that irked Azerbaijan and
fortified it in the conviction that the format of the talks should be
changed, and the intermediaries too.

In other words, the Parliamentary Assembly and its decision benefits
Azerbaijan enormously. With this backing, Baku will certainly try to
minimize the role of the OSCE Minsk Group and insist on the transfer
of the debates to the UN (where it can count on the unequivocal
support from most Arab countries) and to the International Court.
Moreover, some specialists fear that the latest diplomatic triumph
may provoke Azerbaijan into trying to settle the problem by sheer
strength of arms again. Atkinson said in his report that there were
three solutions to the problem, including a military solution where
Azerbaijan would send its army to liberate its own territories.

The chance of the use of force is slim, dealing the Karabakh and much
less the Armenian army will be difficult indeed, but official Yerevan
does not rule out this possibility all the same. In any case,
Armenian Defense Minister Serzh Sarkisjan warned Azerbaijan the other
day that should it decide to settle the matter by force, it would
have to lament “40% of the territory, not 20%.”

Resolutions of the Parliamentary Assembly are essentially
recommendations but Baku, Yerevan, and Stepanakert understand the
moral significance of the document. That is probably why
Nagorno-Karabakh TV went to the trouble of finding an interview with
Atkinson dated 1993 when he was chairman of the commission for
non-CIS countries. Atkinson said after a visit to Nagorno-Karabakh
then that, “Azerbaijan began this war and the European Commission
will not accept it as a member unless the war is stopped.” He said in
the same interview that, “residents of Nagorno-Karabakh have the
right to decide their lot… Our Organization and I myself will do
everything possible to make sure that the Karabakh Armenians live on
their land without duress…” All of that shows that Atkinson’s view
has changed diametrically. Even Western experts ascribe the
Europeans’ eagerness to interfere with the longest conflict in Europe
to economic interests as well as political. The words of Bernard
Fasiet, the new French chairman of the OSCE Minsk Group, confirm it.
On a visit to Baku last week he said that, “the unresolved
Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict affects stability of the region and
interferes with economic projects on a broader scale including
Central Asia.” It should be noted that Western representatives and
the Russian delegation backed the anti-Armenian resolution of the
Parliamentary Assembly. It means that Armenia does not have allies it
can rely on at this point. References to “oil”, “transport”, and
other interests do no apply. It will be much better to think why the
once unquestionable sympathies with Armenia in Europe and Russia are
gradually giving way to disinterest in the Armenian interests…

Translated by A. Ignatkin