REASONS OF NOT HAVING NAGORNO KARABAKH CONFLICT SETTLED SOON

Panorama.am
19:12 07/02/2009

Goran Lenmarker the Personal Representative of the OSCE Parliamentary
Assembly on the NKR conflict visits Southern Caucasus on 9 February. In
9-10 February Lenmarker visits Armenia, in 10-12 he will be in Georgia
and in 12-14 his visit to the region will be concluded by Azerbaijan.

Goran Lenmarker wishes to have meetings with the Presidents of the
above mentioned three countries, the representatives of the Governments
and the Parliaments, as well as non-governmental bodies. The mission
of the Special Representative’s visit to the regional countries is to
discuss the problems of Nagorno Karabakh conflict, Georgian-Ossetian
and Georgian-Abkhazian conflicts.

The press release spread by the OSCE press service points out that
Mr. Lenmarker hopes his visit will serve as an improved signal in
the half way of NKR conflict resolution.

"There is a good opportunity to have the NKR conflict regulated,"
announced Lenmarker and mentioned that "time is precious, and it is
important not to lose the given opportunity."

It is for sure that Lenmarker’s visit to the region is the natural
development of the negotiations dealt over the NKR conflict, which
has been launched since the middles of the previous month when the
OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs made their regular visit to the region and
the Meeting of the President of Armenia and Azerbaijan in Zurich. But
as it is not the first time the negotiations are activated, it means
that Lenmarker treats the issue "optimistically" and it should not
be seriously treated.

It is not by chance that we start our observations from such a
pessimistic start. The thing is that similar statements have not
brought any use to the conflict resolution, moreover, the visits also
have not done. The only reason is that the conflict sides and the
mediators and even some other sides pursue quite different things
under the resolution. And the press release is the evident to our
observation.

"First the resolution should touch upon the refugees and the displaced
people but it should also concern the young people’s fates who wear
out their time in the barricades," said Goran Lenmarker. To point out
the difference of the approaches other examples are useless. For more
than sixty years people in Europe encourage to target human beings in
the base of the problem, to regulate the conflict by overcoming the
obstacles and to secure peace for every person in Armenia, Nagorno
Karabakh and Azerbaijan.

The approach is a typical European one. Is it similar for the South
Caucasus? Definitely, no. An example? Just a day after the press
release has been spread an Azeri military expert announced in his
interview given to "Day.az" that "to solve the conflict through
military activities will demand 10 thousands military officers’
lives". Surely, a nation having European way of thinking would prepare
counter attack to such an announcement and to the one made it. In
this case – no echo.

To conclude that the conflict of Nagorno Karabakh will not be regulated
either this year or the forthcoming ones, because public way of
thinking and its transformation is impossible to organize within one
or even several years. Hence, the visits and the announcements of
reporters and mediators can not impact on the soonest regulation of
the conflict.

But still one thing should be concerned, as if the mediators make
too much effort to get "stable peace" and not taking into account
the current situation, they try to recommend some solutions and
formalize them. But if somehow the situation is improved (the
conflict sides to be forced to sign a regulation document), it will
have an opposite effect. Our societies are not ready which will have
unwritten developments.

"The European experience shows that the conflict should be transformed
into co-operation," stress the mediators. We should agree with the
current statement but we should also add that the European experience
accumulated within hundreds of years, through wars, the Inquisition
and genocide.

We should acknowledge that history evidenced thousands of similar
situations, conflicts, but the developments have been several – wise
peace (the European model), conflict by adopting indefinite peace
(post Soviet Union conflicts) and the most unacceptable version for
us is permanent arm-forced conflict, like Arabic-Israeli conflict.

The very last version, we guess, is the dictated peace; hence we
encourage the advocates of the soonest regulation of the conflict to
think over it seriously.