NAGORNO-KARABAKH: RISKING WAR

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[03:52 pm] 14 November, 2007

Tbilisi/Brussels, 14 November 2007: Azerbaijan and Armenia should halt
their dangerous arms race and restrain their belligerent rhetoric
and instead renew efforts to find a negotiated settlement for the
Nagorno-Karabakh region.

Nagorno-Karabakh: Risking War, the latest report from the International
Crisis Group, examines the dangers of ignoring the conflict both for
the region and for the wider international community. Oil money has
given Azerbaijan new self-confidence and the means to upgrade its
armed forces. Armenia has done surprisingly well economically and
is increasing its own military expenditures. With both countries now
building military capacity, neither believes it is time to compromise.

"The international community needs to take the threat of war
seriously," says Magdalena Frichova, Crisis Group Caucasus Project
Director. "The risk of armed conflict is growing, and the dangers of
complacency enormous."

Armenians and Azerbaijanis went to war over the mountainous province
in the early 1990s, causing some 22,000 to 25,000 deaths and more
than one million refugees and displaced persons in both countries.

Today, most of Nagorno-Karabakh, as well as considerable adjacent
Azerbaijani territory, is occupied by ethnic Armenian forces.

Hope for diplomatic progress has been consistently undermined by
the parties’ lack of political will and insufficient international
resolve. Over the past few years, the leaderships of both countries
have turned their publics increasingly against compromise, while
boosting military expenditures.

Both trends must be reversed.

The current negotiations — the Prague process, facilitated since
April 2004 by the Minsk Group of the Organization for Security and
Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and led by France, Russia and the U.S. —
can provide the framework for a negotiated settlement.

Elections in both Azerbaijan and Armenia will complicate the political
environment in 2008, however, so the sides should agree on a document
of basic principles, even one that specifies where disagreements
remain, before the polls. Such a result would secure what has been
agreed upon so far and maintain the process during the year.

The Minsk Group co-chair and the wider international community
should coordinate efforts to impress on both countries the need
for progress. The EU and the U.S. should make the resolution of the
Nagorno-Karabakh conflict a key element of relations with the parties.

The role of the EU special representative for the South Caucasus
(EUSR) should be strengthened and European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP)
reviews and funding should be used to promote confidence building,
in addition to institution building and human rights.

"The international community needs to pressure hard for peace," says
Sabine Freizer, Crisis Group’s Europe Program Director. "Conditionality
should be used with financial aid instruments, and active diplomacy
should focus both sides on the costs of continued stalemate and
confrontation, which far outweigh those of an early compromise."