KARABAKH AS THE THIRD CONFLICT SIDE

Azat Artsakh – Nagorno Karabakh Republic [NKR]
12 July 05

In Goran Lennmarkers report the standpoint of the third party of the
conflict Nagorno Karabakh is introduced as well. At the end of last
week the Armenian delegation returned from Washington. The head of the
delegation, Vice Speaker of the National Assembly of Armenia Vahan
Hovhanissian and member of the delegation, Member of Parliament Samvel
Nikoyan gave a press conference the topic of which was chiefly the
report of Goran Lennmarker, the OSCE reporter on Nagorno Karabakh.

According to the head of the delegation, the report consisting of
eight points is more than balanced and positive for the Armenian
side. For example, in one of the points of the report G. Lennmarker
avoided giving a political evaluation of the Karabakh conflict
grounded on a standpoint or an argument of either the Armenian or
Azerbaijani sides, stressing that the conflict was not frozen. In
another favourable point for Armenia the reporter pointed out the ways
of transformation of the conflict, i.e. peace talks, Azerbaijan
Armenia cooperation supported by European and Euro-Atlantic
organizations, involvement of parliamentary diplomacy, the support of
the people of Armenia and Azerbaijan to the issue of peaceful
resolution of the conflict bolstered up by the parliamentarians of
both countries. Lennmarker considers unacceptable the approach of
Azerbaijan that the Armenian side must return certain areas to
Azerbaijan before cooperation can be set up between them. Cooperation
needs to be started now, especially in the framework of the project
New Neighbourhood, which is rather favourable for us, says Vahan
Hovhanissian. Another novelty was the introduction of Nagorno Karabakh
together with Armenia and Azerbaijan as the third side of the
conflict. The OSCE does not recognize NKR as an independent state, and
according to the Armenian delegation, Goran Lennmarker explains this
in the following way: Considering that the prospect of cutting the
Caucasian region into small independent countries is dangerous, he
thinks that the way out of maximum security is the unification of
Nagorno Karabakh with Armenia, which can take different forms.

However, the member of the Armenian delegation Samvel Nikoyan noticed
that besides the unification of Armenia and Karabakh Lennmarker also
allowed for leaving Karabakh within Azerbaijan as a sovereignty, which
was naturally refused by the Armenian delegation. According to
V. Hovhanissian, the tactics of the Azerbaijani delegation created
troubles for them during the session. According to the spokesman,
seeing that Lennmarkers report was not favourable for them, they
offered a revision of the PACE resolution as an alternative to
it. This is the reason why we preferred preventing the adoption of the
resolution to presenting an opposing one. We achieved this with
difficulty, with the support of the delegations of the USA, France,
Canada, Greece, and other countries, such as Russia, joined them as
well. According to the vice speaker of the National Assembly, the
balanced report by Lennmarker is the result of the team work of our
delegation, the foreign minister, the Armenian ambassadors to the OSCE
and the US, the lobby of the Armenian community of the US,
particularly the offices of Hay Dat with delegates of different
countries.

CHRISTINE MNATSAKANIAN.
13-07-2005