NAGORNO-KARABAKH FAILS TO MAKE PROGRESS AFTER 12 YEARS
By Dan Shea
dpa German Press Agency
Dec 20 2006
By Dan Shea, Moscow/Baku- Though negotiations are wrapped in secrecy
to hide 12 years of failure, the former Soviet Union’s bloodiest
conflict pitting Armenia against Azerbaijan may be edging closer
to talks that could yield peace – or destroy current diplomatic
efforts entirely. Earlier this year, a raft of new proposals for
Nagorno-Karabakh, a breakaway region in the oil-rich Caucasus republic
of Azerbaijan, received rare positive assessments among international
mediators in Moscow, Paris, Bucharest and Brussels.
But despite several meetings during 2006 between Azeri President
Ilham Aliyev and and Armenian President Robert Kocharyan, no progress
appears to have been made on resolving the conflict.
Aliyev has warned that if talks fail, "Azerbaijan will definitely
reconsider its strategy, tactics and behaviour."
The 4,400-square-kilometre enclave in western Azerbaijan – populated
almost entirely by ethnic Armenians – was ravaged by war in 1988-94
and is today occupied by Armenian troops.
Underscoring the sensitivity of a conflict that left an estimated
35,000 dead and threatens to reignite, the proposals made earlier
this year were kept secret.
Since hostilities ended, the Armenian leadership in Yerevan has
insisted on independence for the region. Baku says it will allow "the
greatest measure" of autonomy, but refuses to part with the enclave.
"The position of Armenia is founded on dreams and illusions. They
think a temporary military supremacy gives them the right to think
about the separation of Nagorno-Karabakh from Azerbaijan," Aliyev says.
Efforts aimed at talks come amid a strong flow of petrodollars into
Aliyev’s coffers, with BP’s 4-billion-dollar Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan
pipeline well into its second year of operation.
President Aliyev has made it clear he wants to spend these funds on
arms. Last summer he told his country’s parliament that Azerbaijan’s
defence budget should surpass Armenia’s entire state spending.
Almost all the 500,000 Azeris that once lived in Nagorno-Karabakh
having long since fled. The region’s residents buy their food using
the Armenian dram and the streets are patrolled by troops from Yerevan.
But 12 years after the official end of fighting, Azeri leaders remain
bitter over the scars left by the Soviet collapse and the ensuing war.
Television commercials and billboards appeal in English to the BP
workers in Baku, reminding them of Azeris displaced from their home
villages in the exodus that accompanied the war.
The presidential bookstore in Baku carries such titles as "The Myth
of a Great Armenia" and "Blood Politics, Or the Philosophy of Revenge:
Armenia in Azerbaijan."
And under the Soviet-era television tower, perched on a promontory
overlooking the skyscraper-studded city, is Martyrs’ Alley, row
after row of graves – most bearing photographs – of Azeris who died
in Nagorno-Karabakh.
The conflict’s roots are found in the earliest days of the Soviet
Union, when Lenin in 1923 created the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous
District within the Soviet Socialist Republic of Azerbaijan, rather
than Armenia, in an effort to win Turkish sympathies.
But with Baku’s perestroika-era leader Heidar Aliyev – the current
president’s late father – encouraging his countrymen to settle in
the 95-per-cent Armenian region in the late 1980s, calls for an
independent Nagorno-Karabakh found resonance in Moscow.
A peaceful nationalist movement quickly turned violent. During and
after the Soviet collapse, Yerevan and Baku vied for Russian support
in equipping their armies as a full-scale war broke out.
For six years the upper hand in the conflict was determined by the
amount of weaponry Moscow supplied, Russian defence analyst Pavel
Felgenhauer said.
"Armenia had the advantage, then Azerbaijan, then Armenia again,"
Felgenhauer said, adding that Armenia was able to decisively gain
control of the region in 1993 after diplomatic relations between
Moscow and Baku took a turn for the worse.
With Armenian forces occupying nearly one-seventh of Azerbaijan in
1994, peace talks began.
For 12 years negotiations went nowhere, and the Nagorno-Karabakh
question became the trump card in the politics of both countries.
Armenian President Kocharyan was a leader in the breakaway region,
and Azerbaijan’s Ilham Aliyev rode to power on the coattails of his
father, who promised to reclaim the lost territory.
But although Armenian Foreign Minister Vardan Oskanyan earlier this
year spoke of "a real possibility of a rapprochement" with the Azeri
side, Baku now may prefer to hold out.
Since neither side would want to resume the debilitating fighting,
Azerbaijan’s rising clout as a supplier of oil and gas in the Caucasus
gives it the option of waiting until it would be guaranteed control
over Nagorno-Karabakh.
"Negotiations haven’t led to anything, and they won’t lead to
anything," Felgenhauer says.