NKR PEOPLE WILL AGREE TO NOTHING BUT INDEPENDENCE
Karine Ter-Sahakyan

PanARMENIAN.Net
09.07.2009 GMT+04:00

What is essential in the agreement that sooner or later will be signed
is the signature of an NKR representative, without which no agreement
will ever work.

The forthcoming meeting of the Presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan
due in Moscow will hardly bring the sides closer to signing a certain
"framework agreement" on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict regulation. The
matter is not only the fact that no agreement will work without
NKR. Nor is it the fact that the mediators are in a hurry, although
it was exactly this haste that threw back the negotiation process.

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ How far it was thrown back is still unknown,
but one thing is clear: the visit of the Ambassadors of Armenia and
Azerbaijan to the RF, Stepanakert, Yerevan and Baku showed, first of
all, the weakness of the so-called "national diplomacy" and, secondly,
the tough position of not only the NKR leadership, but its people who
will agree to no nothing but the independent status of their country,
a position Baku should have realized still 15 years ago and a stance
we have been repeatedly writing about. If we analyze the visits of the
representatives of Armenian and Azerbaijani communities, unfortunately,
we have to state that the Armenian side did not conduct in the best
possible way. Judge yourselves: beginning with the fact that the
opening of the visit was wrapped up in mysteriousness and concluding
with complete absence of commentaries on the purpose of the visit,
did not add to the respect the NKR people pay to the ambassadors of
"good will". Moreover, it was exactly Stepanakert that came out with
sharp criticism of the initiative, which, by the way, couldn’t be
observed during their first visit back in 2007. Who is to blame for
the failure of the mostly acceptable initiative is still subject to
investigation, but let us deliver rebukes to both the organizers and
the participants of this badly staged performance. For some reason
it so happened that Yerevan proved to be content with the results of
"national diplomacy" and all the Armenian media outlets harmoniously
cited the Azeri representatives, who were not stingy of commentaries
that, in the essence, came to one and the same idea: you cannot go
far from Baku, anyway you are going to return…

We shall not dwell on the outrage about "the absence of the border
between Azerbaijan and Karabakh". But this is the outer side of the
visit. Much more serious is the fact that Nagorno Karabakh is not
yet recognized and, obviously, still long won’t be recognized as a
conflict side that holds voting rights. This was quite clearly put by
OSCE Minsk Group Russian Co-Chair Yuri Merzlyakov. "Representatives
of Nagorno-Karabakh can participate in the negotiations only upon
coordination of the basic principles," the Russian diplomat said. In
reality it indicates only one thing: Nagorno Karabakh can be simply
put before a fact, i.e. before a signed "framework agreement". Now
there is only one question to be decided by NKR: to declare her
disagreement or to immediately dissociate from Yerevan as from a
"guarantor of safety". However, neither of the variants will result in
anything good either for Stepanakert or for Yerevan , and it will come
out as in the Armenian saying: "One Armenian is few but two are many".

Perhaps, it is necessary to note that representatives of different
European structures and regional organizations will be hurrying
to Karabakh from the spring of the current year. Even Turks
attempted to arrive in Stepanakert, but all of them were skillfully
disallowed. According to a high-ranking diplomat of NKR Foreign
Ministry, the pressure on Karabakh is stronger than on Yerevan ,
because the mediators and key regional players know that the essential
thing in the agreement that sooner or later will be signed is the
signature of an NKR representative, without which no agreement will
ever work. As an example the Bishkek Protocol is given, which bears
the signatures of the NKR and Azerbaijani Defense Ministers.

Reasoning from the recent developments in the region and the course
of the world to multi-polarity, which can be proved by the failure
of the G8 summit in L’Aquila , Italy , serious developments await
us in the regulation process. Most likely, changes will occur some
time in autumn and, quite probably, will end in a second Maindorf
Declaration, i.e. in a simple memorandum of understanding, which
is a widely-used practice in diplomacy, when it is necessary to say
everything and nothing at the same time. Such is the reality today
– fortune telling on coffee grounds, mutually exclusive statements
of Mathew Bryza and acknowledgement of the excellent knowledge of
the Russian language and literature by Bernard Fassier will continue
until the Madrid principles are introduced. But to the honour of the
OSCE Minsk Group we’ll note that for 15 years already it maintains
the ceasefire regime. And let us agree that it’s not little work.