ARMENIA: GOVERNMENT GEARS UP FOR POSSIBLE DEAL WITH AZERBAIJAN ON KARABAKH
Emil Danielyan

EurasiaNet
Dec 23 2008
NY

With international efforts to resolve the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict
gaining fresh momentum, Armenia’s leadership appears to be preparing
ground for a possible breakthrough in its long-running negotiations
with Azerbaijan. It has pushed through parliament an amendment paving
the way for a nationwide referendum on the issue reportedly promised
by President Serzh Sargsyan.

The move came amid increasingly vocal domestic opposition to a
framework Armenian-Azerbaijani peace accord proposed by international
mediators. The Sargsyan administration faces an uphill battle in
overcoming opposition from nationalist groups in and outside the
Armenian government as well, as the ethnic Armenian leadership of
Nagorno-Karabakh.

The foreign ministers of Armenia and Azerbaijan met in Helsinki
on December 3 for more talks on the basic principles of a Karabakh
settlement proposed by a team of US, Russian and French mediators
co-chairing the OSCE’s so-called Minsk Group. In a joint statement
issued the next day, Foreign Ministers Sergei Lavrov of Russia and
Bernard Kouchner of France and US Assistant Secretary of State Daniel
Fried urged the conflicting parties to finalize those principles
"in coming months."

They also emphasized the "positive momentum" which they said was
established by Sargsyan and Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev during
their most recent meeting — hosted by Russia’s Dmitry Medvedev outside
Moscow on November 2. Aliyev and Sargsyan issued a joint declaration
there pledging to "intensify further steps in the negotiating
process." The mediators hope that they will meet again soon to close
remaining gaps. Aides to the two presidents have said that the next
Armenian-Azerbaijani summit would likely take place early next year.

Bernard Fassier, France’s chief Nagorno-Karabakh negotiator, told RFERL
on December 9 that Lavrov, Kouchner and Fried presented to Baku and
Yerevan a "technical document" that puts a settlement within reach
by next summer. The chief stumbling blocks to date have centered on
details of a proposed referendum on self-determination in Karabakh,
and a timetable for the liberation of at least six of the seven
Azerbaijani districts around the disputed enclave that were fully or
partly occupied by Armenian forces during the 1991-1994 war.

Meeting with leaders of nearly 50 Armenian political parties behind
the closed doors on November 19, Sargsyan reportedly indicated that an
Armenian-Azerbaijani peace accord is still not imminent. According to
some participants of that meeting, he also promised to put a possible
peace deal to a popular vote.

Two weeks later, Armenia’s parliament passed a government-drafted
amendment to an Armenian law on referendums that enables the government
to hold non-binding plebiscites on any policy issue. Prior to passage
of the amendment, parliament and the president had responsibility
for calling referendums, and authorities were obliged to abide by
their results.

Opposition politicians and independent observers see a direct
link between the adopted amendment and the Karabakh peace
process. Government officials and pro-presidential MPs have not ruled
out of the conduct of a Karabakh-related referendum in Armenia in
the coming months.

A senior member of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF,
also known as the Dashnak Party), a nationalist party represented
in Sargsyan’s coalition government, asserted at a December 9 news
conference that the signing of a framework agreement on Karabakh in
early 2009 is "not unlikely." Giro Manoyan also reaffirmed the ARF’s
opposition to the mediators’ existing peace proposals that seem to
allow for continued Armenian control over Karabakh. "What we wanted in
1988 (at the start of a popular movement for Karabakh’s unification
with Armenia) can not be a basis for today because a lot has changed
since then," he said. "Azerbaijan is chiefly responsible for that and
it must pay a price." Manoyan and many other nationalists generally
would no longer be satisfied with the formalization of Karabakh’s
separation from Azerbaijan. Now, they also want Armenia to keep much
of what is now occupied Azerbaijani territory.

Another ARF leader, deputy parliamentary speaker Hrayr Karapetian,
insisted that the Armenian side should be happy with the Karabakh
status quo and that Azerbaijan will not attempt to win back its lost
territories by force in the foreseeable future. "If this situation
continues for 10 or 20 years, we will still be in a winning position,"
Karapetian told the Yerevan newspaper Pakagits in an interview
published on December 18.

Hard-line opposition groups, though, are even more vocal in
opposing any territorial concessions to Azerbaijan. Like the
ARF, they believe that the occupied Azerbaijani districts are so
vital for Armenia’s security that they must not be traded even for
international recognition of Karabakh’s secession from Azerbaijan. As
talk of a Karabakh breakthrough intensified in late October, a group
of opposition politicians and intellectuals launched a new movement
called Miatsum (Unification) to campaign against the return of what
they call "liberated territories."

"If we cede any of those lands, we will disrupt the security system
that has served us well for the past 15 years and will make another war
inevitable," Zaruhi Postanjian, a Miatsum leader and parliament deputy
from the opposition Heritage party, told EurasiaNet. "Even if the
international community recognizes Nagorno-Karabakh’s independence."

Significantly, government officials in Karabakh seem to share this
view, raising more questions about Yerevan’s ability and willingness to
implement the peace formula currently on the table. Armenian Foreign
Minister Eduard Nalbandian visited the Karabakh capital Stepanakert
on December 19 to meet with the self-proclaimed republic’s president,
Bako Sahakian. An Armenian Foreign Ministry statement said Nalbandian
briefed Sahakian on details of the Helsinki talks and discussed with
the Karabakh leader other "recent developments" in the negotiating
process. Sahakian’s office also gave few details of the talks, saying
only that the two men discussed "the current phase of the Karabakh
conflict resolution." Incidentally, President Sargsyan twice traveled
to Karabakh shortly before and after his last encounter with Aliyev.

The secretary of Sargsyan’s National Security Council, Artur
Baghdasarian, has been a rare conciliatory voice in the Armenian public
discourse on Karabakh dominated by outspoken nationalist figures. In a
December 19 interview with the newspaper Iravunk de facto, Baghdasarian
again made a case for mutual compromise with Azerbaijan, saying
that it would give Armenia "unique opportunities for political and
economic development." He said the Armenian leadership will not
accept any agreement that stops short of legitimizing Karabakh’s
independence or unification with Armenia and giving the Karabakh
Armenians "international security guarantees."

Baghdasarian, whose Country of Law Party is also a junior partner in
Armenia’s ruling coalition, further confirmed Sargsyan’s reported
referendum pledge. "God willing, we will arrive at a mutually
acceptable variant of settlement that the authorities will present
to the people’s judgment," he said.

Editor’s Note: Emil Danielyan is a Yerevan-based journalist and
political analyst.