CO-CHAIR VOTE AGAINST UN RESOLUTION ON KARABAKH CONFLICT IMPERILS NEGOTIATIONS PROCESS

Today.Az

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April 4 2008
Azerbaijan

The recent voting on the General Assembly resolution tabled by
Azerbaijan has demonstrated Baku’s increasing frustration with the
lack of progress in the prolonged peace talks with Armenia within
the OSCE Minsk Group format.

The vote by the three Minsk Group co-chairs against the resolution
has strengthened Azerbaijan’s skepticism about the Minsk Group format
itself, and has in that sense muddled prospects for the negotiations.

BACKGROUND: When on March 14 the UN General Assembly adopted a
resolution on the situation on the occupied territories of Azerbaijan,
the United Nations added another document calling for the withdrawal
of Armenian troops and reaffirming the world organization’s support
for Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity. This particular document was
also adopted just two months prior to of the fifteenth anniversary of
the passing of the first UN Security Council resolution in April 1993,
which, ironically, called for an "immediate" withdrawal following the
occupation of the Kelbajar region of Azerbaijan. In the intervening
years, both the Security Council and the General Assembly have passed
several other resolutions on the subject.

While the 15 years passed after the adoption of the first resolution
go a long way to demonstrate just how committed the Security Council
is to enforcing its own resolutions, the debate and voting at the
General Assembly this time around revealed some interesting details.

With 39 votes for and 7 against, the resolution clearly reflects
Azerbaijan’s growing international profile. Among other, the resolution
was widely supported by the members of the Organization of the Islamic
Conference and members of GUAM – Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine. At the
same time, the vote against the resolution on the part of France, the
United States and Russia – the three main mediators in the conflict
who are the co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group – put them squarely
on Armenia’s side, along with one of its surprising companions,
Vanuatu. The decision of the co-chairs to side with one of the parties
to the conflict rather than abstaining, as most other European states
did, has raised substantial doubt regarding the impartiality of the
Minsk Group Co-chairs in Azerbaijan and elsewhere. By now, public
opinion in Azerbaijan is so negative about the three co-chair nations
that this self-inflicted damage may take them much longer to repair
than, perhaps, initially envisioned.

Indeed, this vote may carry more long-term consequences for the
conflict resolution process than visible at first sight.

By trying to reassert their own, somewhat self-important, monopoly
over the mediation process between Armenia and Azerbaijan, France,
Russia and the United States have to Azerbaijanis only confirmed the
wide-spread perception of bias on their behalf that was already growing
before the resolution was passed. As a result, the co-chairs may have
weakened their ability to function as effective disinterested brokers.

Of course, the silver lining is that the mediators, who have often
disagreed on most important issues, produced a consensus even if
that meant opposing a UN resolution based on the same fundamentals of
international law they regularly defend; and although it meant siding
with one party in the conflict that they are tasked to mediate. This is
not the first time that mediators are more concerned with themselves
than the problem they are tasked to resolve. As often happens with
protracted conflicts, some things develop into a routine, be it
the non-implementation of international documents or co-chairs too
involved in their internal consensus-building.

There are considerable indications that the United States was inclined
to abstain from voting, while the other co-chairs were adamant in
their determination to vote against. Washington may have desired to
maintain a semblance of neutrality, but as this inclination was not
followed through, the matter is no of mainly academic interest.

IMPLICATIONS: For Azerbaijan, the vote against the resolution by
the co-chairs came in the wake of Kosovo’s unilateral declaration of
independence. The co-chair countries missed an excellent chance to
dispel doubts about the Kosovo precedent. By adopting the resolution,
the General Assembly exposed some rather confused approaches and
ambiguous perceptions of international law in Moscow, Paris and
Washington. This seeming confusion between the mediators’ stated
support of basic principles of international law and, at the same time,
reluctance to vote in order to uphold them, was in fact highlighted
in a speech by the Turkish representative at the debate.

Azerbaijan’s, and for that matter Georgia’s, sensitivities regarding
their territorial integrity should not be underestimated. Evidently,
more than any other issue, the attitude towards the nation’s
territorial integrity is the key element shaping strategic perceptions
in Baku. A related general concern is the role that the international
peace-keeping force, incidentally including both an Azerbaijani and
a Georgian contingent, played in facilitating Kosovo’s separation
from Serbia, in spite of the early promises to respect Serbia’s
territorial integrity.

Given the experience with the Russian peacekeepers in Georgia and,
most recently, with the NATO-led force in the Balkans, the co-chairs’
decision to side with Armenia at the General Assembly is likely to make
Azerbaijan more suspicious of accepting an international peacekeeping
presence as an element of a potential agreement.

Overall, it is clear that the lessons to be learned in Eurasia
from the Kosovo case deserve a more serious discussion than has so
far been forthcoming. So far, it seems, Azerbaijan’s and Georgia’s
Western partners have neither been willing or prepared to enter into
a meaningful dialogue regarding the impact of the Kosovo developments.

Moreover, the co-chairs voted against the resolution just as they had
been showing remarkable reluctance to criticize Armenian authorities
for using unprecedented levels of violence against protesters during
the post-election confrontation in Yerevan. This relaxed attitude
towards events in Armenia stands in sharp contrast to the harsh Western
criticism of the earlier and less confrontational internal troubles
in both Azerbaijan and Georgia. Armenia’s political crisis affected
Azerbaijan as well, when the most significant armed confrontation in
years occurred along the line of contact just as the political crisis
was unfolding in the streets of Yerevan.

All this bodes well neither for the mediators’ overall credibility,
nor for the prospects of reaching a peaceful solution to the
conflict. Armenia’s reaction to the resolution illustrates this.

During the debate at the United Nations, the Armenian representative
called the UN General Assembly resolution a "sheet of paper," a
stance that may be influenced by the mediators’ condoning of Armenia’s
long-standing occupation of the Azerbaijani territories. An Armenian
government spokesman in Yerevan described only those not voting in
favor of the resolution as "civilized nations." This list, of course,
included a significant number of UN member-states, including two of
Armenia’s neighbors – Georgia and Turkey.

CONCLUSIONS: In the aftermath of the General Assembly vote, voices
in Baku calling for dissolution of the Minsk Group have become
much louder and more numerous. Not surprisingly, these sentiments
are now echoed by some official figures as well. Speaking in Baku,
representatives of both Russia and the United States said that the
UN resolutions are not really effective in resolving conflicts. While
it is hard to disagree with them, none addressed the question whether
these two permanent members of the Security Council bear part of the
responsibility for this state of affairs.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress