CAUCASUS: AZERBAIJANI, ARMENIAN, KARABAKH OFFICIALS ASSESS TALKS
Liz Fuller

EurasiaNet, NY
Dec 2 2006

A EurasiaNet Partner Post from RFE/RL

Over the past 12 months, the three co-chairmen of the OSCE Minsk
Group that seeks to mediate a solution to the Karabakh conflict have
warned repeatedly that upcoming elections in Armenia and Azerbaijan
could scupper chances of reaching a peace settlement.

rmenia is due to hold parliamentary elections in 2007. Both Armenia
and Azerbaijan will hold presidential elections in 2008.

In the run-up to those ballots, the co-chairs reason, the two
countries’ leaders will be reluctant to agree on the serious mutual
compromises that a settlement will inevitably necessitate.

Consequently, a sense of urgency has imbued successive meetings this
year between either the Armenian and Azerbaijani foreign ministers
or the two countries’ presidents.

The meeting in Minsk on November 28 between Armenian President
Robert Kocharian and his Azerbaijani counterpart Ilham Aliyev was
thus widely perceived as the last chance for some time to reach even
a preliminary agreement.

Comments On Azerbaijani TV

The two presidents did not issue any formal statement after their
meeting in Minsk. But Aliyev told Azerbaijani National Television on
November 29 that since the so-called "Prague process" talks between the
Armenian and Azerbaijani foreign ministers on approaches to resolving
the conflict began, the negotiating process has gone through several
stages. "We are approaching the final stage," he said.

The first Prague talks took place in April 2004, and Aliyev has met
with Kocharian seven times since then; the Minsk meeting was their
third this year.

Aliyev said the Minsk talks "were held in a constructive way," and
that "we managed to a find a solution to a number of problems we could
not agree on before." He added, however, that "divergences remain on
crucial points," and that further progress "depends on us ourselves,"
presumably meaning the conflict sides, as opposed to the Minsk Group.

Position ‘Unchanged’

Aliyev stressed that "Azerbaijan’s negotiating position remains
unchanged," insofar as any solution must preserve Azerbaijan’s
territorial integrity. He further stressed that Azerbaijani displaced
persons (whose number he said exceeds 1 million, compared with UNHCR
estimates of 800,000) must be enabled to return to their homes.

Aliyev also said the four resolutions on Nagorno-Karabakh adopted by
the UN Security Council (in 1993, and which call for an immediate and
unconditional withdrawal of Armenian forces from occupied Azerbaijani
territory) must be fulfilled.

He said the population of Nagorno-Karabakh "must be provided with
the highest form of self-government" possible within Azerbaijan. The
constitution of the Azerbaijan Republic defines the Nakhichevan
Republic as an autonomous republic within the Azerbaijan Republic,
with its own parliament, but makes no mention of Nagorno-Karabakh.

Armenia, however, rules out any "vertical subordination" of the NKR
to the central Azerbaijani government.

Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov, who with his Armenian
counterpart Vartan Oskanian also traveled to Minsk, similarly
described the meeting between the two presidents in a December 1
interview with day.az. He said the meeting took place in a productive
and open atmosphere.

Mammadyarov said that only one issue remains on which the two
presidents have failed to reach agreement, but he declined to
specify what it is, referring to the need to keep the peace process
confidential. He added that he plans to meet in Brussels on December
4-5 with Oskanian and the Minsk Group co-chairs.

Foreign Minister Oskanian for his part was more guarded in his
comments on the Minsk meeting, telling journalists on his return to
Yerevan late on November 28 that "I cannot say concretely whether
progress was made or not, but both presidents assessed the meeting
as positive in terms of atmosphere and constructive approaches,"
RFE/RL’s Armenian Service reported on November 29.

Echoing Aliyev, Oskanian said the presidents "mainly concentrated on
the issues in the document on which no agreement has been reached,"
presumably an allusion to a half-page document, drafted by the Minsk
Group co-chairs and enumerating general principles, that the two
presidents discussed earlier this year.

Oskanian also said that the elections due in Armenia next spring
"will not interrupt" the ongoing peace negotiations, but he admitted
that they could make it more difficult to reach any agreement.

Lacking Armenian Response

Kocharian declined to comment on the talks. In Stepanakert, however,
Armen Melikian, an aide to Arkady Ghukasian, president of the
self-proclaimed Nagorno-Karabakh Republic (NKR), expressed concern
over the implications of President Aliyev’s pronouncements.

"If President Aliyev is saying that the process is moving in a
positive direction, that is quite dangerous in itself," Melikian
told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service on November 30. "To my knowledge,
his idea of a positive direction is that Nagorno-Karabakh cannot be
an independent and sovereign state."

As outlined by the Minsk Group co-chairmen in June, the draft peace
plan under discussion envisages the gradual withdrawal of Armenian
forces from territory they currently occupy contiguous to the NKR;
the demilitarization of that territory, including the strategic
Lachin corridor and Kelbacar, and the deployment of an international
peacekeeping force; then, at some future date, the future status of
the NKR vis-a-vis the Azerbaijani central government would be decided
in a "popular vote or referendum." Insofar as the population of the
NKR is overwhelmingly ethnic Armenian, such a vote would indubitably
register support for independence.

Even so, Melikian admitted to RFE/RL in February that the Karabakh
leadership is not enthusiastic about that draft proposal. He said
that any discussion of a referendum is inappropriate in light of
Baku’s a priori insistence that Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity
must be preserved at all costs.

The Armenian leadership, for its part, has repeatedly made clear that
it will not sign any final peace settlement that is unacceptable to
the NKR.