"PROGRESS’ IN THE NAGORNO-KARABAKH PEACE PROCESS

Journal of Turkish Weekly
June 8 2009

A meeting on June 4 between the presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan
in St. Petersburg resulted in no concrete agreements, nothing like the
Moscow Declaration of November 2008. This was not surprising. Neither
side had made much of the meeting in advance, with Azerbaijan’s
foreign minister stating the day beforehand that he did not expect
much progress and official Yerevan making no optimistic claims (RFE/RL,
June 3).

For Caucasus-watchers the reaction to the summit was nothing that
had not been heard before. Emphasis is placed on "moving forward"
(Armenia), "creating a basis for the continuation" of the negotiations
(Azerbaijan), and on the "constructive atmosphere" in which the meeting
was carried out (the OSCE Minsk Group, tasked with mediating the
conflict). US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, at a press conference
with her Turkish counterpart in Washington (State Department, June
5), expressed satisfaction with the fact that "a lot of progress has
been made in a relatively short period of time" towards resolution of
the conflict – but, a cynic would ask, where is this progress? What
tangible results can be shown after seventeen years of mediation?

A pessimist would argue that nothing has been achieved. Hostile
rhetoric on both sides is still common. Azerbaijan insists that the
military option for the liberation of the occupied territories remains
on the table; Armenia insists that Nagorno Karabakh must determine its
own fate; Russia continues to use Armenia as an outpost of influence
in the South Caucasus. Overall, the geopolitical picture looks little
different to 1994. A slightly less cynical view would note the obvious
fact that there has been no resumption of large-scale hostilities
since 1994. This in itself, they would argue, is worth celebrating.

An optimist, like the jovial US co-chair Matthew Bryza, would say
that a solution is – if not around the corner – then certainly on the
horizon. Progress has been made, the two sides are closer together,
and some general outlines of a settlement have been agreed upon.

It is easy, as an outsider, to be very sceptical about this, given
the lack of any concrete results (the Moscow Declaration was the first
document to which the Armenian and Azerbaijani leaders had put their
signatures in fifteen years).

But much of the progress towards peace has, by virtue of necessity,
been made behind closed doors, making it hard to quantify the
results. A diplomat involved in the discussions made this plain at a
meeting in London’s Chatham House back in February. He stressed that
much of the work of the Minsk Group is not reported publicly, largely
because the peace process is deeply politicised at a geopolitical and
a domestic level. Public opinion in both countries remains strongly
opposed to any form of compromise. Any willingness to give ground
would be politically disastrous, particular in Armenia, where a
willingness to make concessions on Karabakh cost Levon Ter-Petrosian
the presidency in 1998.

The irony is that the peace plan which toppled Mr. Ter-Petrosian is
now said to be broadly accepted by his successor’s protégé, Serzh
Sargsyan (Armenia Now, October 31 2008) – whilst the diplomat’s
point about secrecy is supported by the fact that the so-called
Madrid Principles (which constitute the basis for current talks)
have never been officially made public. What is known is that they
involve a phased withdrawal of Armenian forces from the occupied
zones, the deployment of international peacekeepers, the return
of internally displaced Azerbaijanis, and a referendum on Nagorno
Karabakh’s status at a later stage. It took nearly ten years for these
principles to be accepted as policy by Yerevan, and even today they
are only discussed vaguely. It is a further irony – and a sign of how
political the Karabakh issue remains – that Mr. Ter-Petrosian, now
a major opposition figure, has attacked the government of President
Sargsyan for selling out Karabakh by committing to the Principles.

For both Armenia and Azerbaijan, the Madrid Principles look like the
least-bad option, although how much progress has been made towards
agreeing on them (let alone implementing them) is unclear due to the
secrecy of the negotiations. There are certainly grounds for believing
that Armenia has been dragging its feet, unwilling to upset the status
quo which has served it relatively well for years. Increased diplomatic
traffic recently may, to an extent, reflect Yerevan’s realisation that
the tantalising prospect of an open border with Turkey is not going
to happen unless real progress is made on Karabakh. But Azerbaijan
may be holding out for a better deal as well, and the attitude of
its diplomats towards the Minsk Group has hardly been enthusiastic
(RFE/RL, May 13).

To get to a negotiated settlement, the murkiness of the peace process
needs to change. Both sides are using the confidential nature of the
negotiations to score political points. And pessimists can dismiss
meetings such as the one in St. Petersburg as meaningless, an easy
position to take given the vague, optimistic statements that the
co-chairs put out afterwards.

The Minsk Group needs to publicly outline the Madrid Principles and
declare the status of each one. The results of meetings between the
presidents and the co-chairs should be announced with reference to the
Principles, and the mediators should not shrink from pointing out areas
in which the politicians need to make more effort, as well as noting
the areas of progress to which they repeatedly refer. For their part,
Baku and Yerevan must be bold and controversial: they must publicly
accept the Principles and inform their respective publics that this
is the only way forward, that sacrifices will have to be made and
compromises brokered in order to build lasting peace.

The lack of transparency in the Karabakh peace process is, as
discussed, put down to the sensitivity of the discussions. But this
sensitivity stems mainly from an unwillingness to engage respective
populations about the need to make hard choices. Allowances should –
of course – be made for matters of real delicacy and national security,
but without admitting what goes wrong as well as what goes right,
the peace process will become viewed ever more cynically. The two
sides are due to meet again, perhaps as early as July. If the only
results of that meeting are more mentions of "moving forward’, the
response should be: where?