HEAD OF PACE SUBCOMMITTEE: "WE WILL CLEARLY NEED TO STUDY AND UNDERSTAND EXISTING (AND PAST) FROZEN AND LIVE CONFLICTS, INCLUDING NAGORNO KARABAKH"

Today.Az
politics/50574.html
Feb 9 2009
Azerbaijan

According to head of the newly created subcommittee David Wilshire,
the subcommittee will study Nagorno Karabakh and other conflicts to
prevent wars in Europe.

He said the subcommittee was set up in response to one of the
preliminary conclusions reached when thinking about lessons that could
be learned from the Russia-Georgia war. This preliminary conclusion
was that warning signs and comments by Russians and Georgians were
not taken as seriously as they could have been over a considerable
period of time by Member States of the Council of Europe.

The subcommittee has two tasks: "to organise a conference for all
those invited in monitoring and /or assisting with issues that might
lead to an outbreak of violence between countries. The aims for the
conference will be to learn about what is currently being done by
various organisations (such as the UN, OSCE, NATO, CIS, CofE, EU,
etc)explore whether working together is a possibility and discuss
how we might all do more to prevent further wars in Europe.

At the same time, the head of the subcommittee noted that working to
resolve ‘frozen conflicts’ and/or become involved in the consequences
of a ‘live conflict’ are not part of our terms of reference. "However,
we will clearly need to study and understand existing (and past)
frozen and live conflicts. This will of course include Nagorno
Karabakh. If our work is successful it would seek to play a part in
drawing the attention of Member States to the risk of this ‘frozen
conflict’ being in danger of thawing out and becoming a new war –
so that steps could be taken to alert Member States and thus help
prevent an outbreak of fighting".