Montenegro referendum sets precedent for Karabakh solution – Armenian paper

Ayots Ashkhar, Yerevan
24 May 06

Text of Vardan Grigoryan’s report by Armenian newspaper Ayots Ashkhar
on 24 May headlined “Montenegro precedent” and subheaded “New
situation in the Karabakh negotiations”

The independence referendum held in Montenegro on 21 May drastically
changes the world’s previous ideas of the right to self-determination
and territorial integrity.

It turned out after the referendum that it is possible to separate
“blood brothers” in the Balkans in order to speed up Montenegro’s
admission to the European Union, while everything possible can be done
in the post-Soviet area to preserve the nonexistent “territorial
integrity” of Moldova, Georgia and Azerbaijan which are weaker than
Serbia. At the same time, it is known that international law equally
applies to all subjects that recognize its standards.

The double standards of the West lead to the freezing of post-Soviet
conflicts and turn nations involved in them into hostages of serious
geo-political games. This happened in the case of the Dniester region,
Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

But the Nagornyy Karabakh problem was separated from this “package”.
It is no secret that in the last few years, the USA and the European
Union have always separated Karabakh from the rest of the unrecognized
post-Soviet countries, emphasizing the unique nature of the Karabakh
issue. The idea of holding a second self-determination referendum in
Karabakh result from this. This referendum gains a new sense and
meaning after the referendum held in Montenegro.

Earlier, the problem of holding the self-determination referendum in
the Nagornyy Karabakh republic [NKR] was seen in the context of the
Armenian-Azerbaijani negotiations and the signing of a peace agreement
on their basis. It is natural that Azerbaijan is doing everything
possible to postpone the referendum.

But the recent events show that the world community should see the
referendum which will be held in the NKR through the prism of the
“Montenegro option”, i.e. it should not take Azerbaijan’s agreement as
a basis. When the leadership of Serbia recently spoke out against the
referendum in Montenegro, nobody listened to them. In doing so, the
entire Western community in the person of the OSCE Minsk Group member
countries – the USA and France – set a precedent according to which
the holding of a referendum does not depend on the principle of
“territorial integrity”. It is clear that in this new legal and
political reality, the terms and procedure of the referendum in
Karabakh become a subject not of the Armenian-Azerbaijani talks, but
of relations between the NKR leadership and people and mediator
states.