VOTING BEGINS IN FLEDGLING ‘STATE’
CNN
/07/19/karabakh.election.reut/
July 19 2007
STEPANAKERT, Nagorno-Karabakh Republic (Reuters) — Voting for a
new leader started in the breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh on
Thursday in an election intended to stress the Armenian-populated
region’s self-proclaimed independence from Azerbaijan.
Armenia’s current president Robert Kocharyan is a former leader of
Nagorno-Karabakh.
The head of the region’s election commission Sergey Nasibyan hailed the
election campaign as democratic and said local and foreign observers
were monitoring the polls, Armenian television reported.
Muslim Azerbaijan, which lost control of Nagorno-Karabakh after a
war in the early 1990s, has already denounced the election as illegal
under international law.
At least 25 percent of the enclave’s 91,000 voters have to take part
for the 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. (0300 to 1500 GMT) election to be considered
valid by Karabakh authorities. Anyone taking over 50 percent of the
votes in the first round wins outright.
Karabakh seceded from Azerbaijan in the 1990s and proclaimed
independence, though this has not been recognized by the rest of
the world.
No international organizations will monitor the vote, in which five
hopefuls are running to replace Karabakh’s current leader Arkady
Gukasyan, who is due to step down after holding the post for two
five-year terms.
Bako Saakyan, a 46-year-old former head of Karabakh’s security service
who is openly supported by the incumbent, is the favorite to win. His
main rival is the region’s deputy foreign minister Masis Mailyan,
aged 39.
Many of the Azeri minority fled during the fighting, which claimed
more than 35,000 lives before a cease-fire was brokered in 1994,
and the region is now populated almost entirely by ethnic Armenians,
who enjoy Christian Armenia’s backing.
Armenia’s current president Robert Kocharyan is a former leader of
Nagorno-Karabakh.
"The authorities have declared their support for Saakyan. This means
it is namely him who will become the next president," said a taxi
driver in the Karabakh capital, Stepanakert.
Both leading contenders are adamant on the main issue — full
independence for Karabakh.
Saakyan says he wants to make the sliver of land and its 140,000 people
"an example of democratic rule" to persuade the international community
to recognize Karabakh’s independence.
"Creating civil society is the way towards resolving the
Nagorno-Karabakh issue," he has said during his campaign.
The Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe has been
trying to broker a peace deal between Azerbaijan and Armenia since
the 1994 cease-fire.
Mailyan said he hopes that eventual international recognition
of Serbia’s rebel province of Kosovo, populated mainly by ethnic
Albanians, will create an important precedent leading to officially
accepted independence for Karabakh.
"The Kosovo precedent, if it occurs and if international recognition
finally takes place, is of interest to me because an unrecognized
state will thus become recognized, irrespective of what its mother
country has to say," Mailyan told Reuters.
"This means we have a chance to become independent — according to
a new scenario."
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has already said he does not
consider Kosovo a precedent for Nagorno-Karabakh.