ARMENIA, AZERBAIJAN TRADE MORE ACCUSATIONS AT UN
By Emil Danielyan

Radio Liberty, Czech Rep.
Sept 26 2006

Armenia and Azerbaijan have failed to hold potentially crucial
peace talks in New York, accusing each other instead of hampering
international efforts to resolve the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

The foreign ministers of the two South Caucasus foes sounded
pessimistic about a near-term solution to the dispute as they
addressed the ongoing 61st session of the UN General Assembly late
Monday. Armenia’s Vartan Oskanian said Azerbaijan is reluctant to
accept international mediators’ most recent peace proposals, while
his Azerbaijani counterpart Elmar Mammadyarov accused Yerevan of
avoiding further direct negotiations with Baku.

Oskanian and Mammadyarov were expected to meet on the sidelines of the
Assembly session and try to kickstart the peace process that ran into
trouble earlier this year. Officials have said that the talks could
pave the way for another, potentially decisive Armenian-Azerbaijani
summit on Karabakh.

However, the two men failed to come face to face on Monday and were
not scheduled to do so on Tuesday. Oskanian was only due to meet
separately with the American, French and Russian co-chairs of the
OSCE Minsk Group in New York.

Oskanian and other Armenian officials have said that the planned
meeting of the foreign ministers was called into question by the
General Assembly’s decision earlier this month to discuss the conflicts
in Karabakh and elsewhere in the former Soviet Union. The issue was
included on the assembly agenda at the urging of Azerbaijan, Georgia,
Moldova and Ukraine. Armenia has long resisted UN involvement in the
Karabakh peace process, insisting that the Minsk Group remain the
sole mediating body.

"It is difficult to hope for the breakthrough in the negotiations
when Armenia rejects face-to-face meetings and refuses to take a
constructive approach to solve existing problems," Mammadyarov said in
his speech. He charged that the Armenians are defying international
norms by insisting on international recognition of the Karabakh
Armenians’ right to self-determination.

Oskanian strongly denied this, arguing that Yerevan has largely
accepted the Minsk Group’s current peace plan that would allow the
predominantly Armenian population of Karabakh to determine the disputed
region’s status in a referendum. "One cannot blame us for thinking
that Azerbaijan is not ready or interested in a negotiated peace,"
he said. "Yet having rejected the other two compromise solutions
that have been proposed over the last 8 years, they do not want to
be accused of rejecting the peace plan on the table today.

"Therefore, they are using every means available – from state violence
to international maneuvers – to try to bring the Armenians to do
the rejecting. But Armenia is on record: we have agreed to each of
the basic principles in the document that’s on the table today,"
added Oskanian.

Azerbaijan’s position on the Minsk Group plan remains unclear, with
top aides to President Ilham Aliev regularly lambasting the mediators
for their refusal to push for a restoration of Azerbaijani control
over Karabakh. Mammadyarov noted in that regard that agreement on
Karabakh’s status requires the "consent of both the Azerbaijani
and Armenian communities of Nagorno-Karabakh," but made it clear
that Baku is ready to consider only ways of ensuring its "self-rule
within Azerbaijan." He also demanded Armenian withdrawal from "all
the occupied territories of Azerbaijan."

Armenian officials insist that under the proposed peace deal, residents
of Karabakh will be asked to vote for the region’s independence,
reunification with Armenia or return under Azerbaijani rule. The
mediators have stopped short of publicly confirming this, saying
only that practical modalities of the referendum would be decided
"through further negotiations."