THEY LET NAGORNO-KARABAKH NEGOTIATE
by by Aliya Samigullina and Ilya Azar
Gazeta.ru
Jan 25 2010
Russia
It is possible that Nagorno-Karabakh will participate in talks on
the status of the unrecognized republic. This is the result of a
meeting of the presidents of Russia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan. If
Nagorno-Karabakh’s involvement in the talks does not prove to be just
a formality, this will lead to a breakthrough in relations between
Yerevan, Baku, and Stepanakert, experts believe.
A routine tripartite meeting of Russian President Dmitriy Medvedev,
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, and Armenian President Serzh
Sargsyan devoted to Nagorno-Karabakh took place in Sochi Monday [
25 January]. After the talks Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov
declared that Yerevan and Baku will prepare their proposals and
additions to the updated basic principles of a settlement of the
Nagorno-Karabakh conflict (the "Madrid principles").
Lavrov elaborated that "there is a general understanding on the
preamble to this document." "The chief result today was an accord that,
although there are some parts of the document that are not yet the
object of agreement among the sides, the sides will prepare their
own specific ideas relating to these parts and their own specific
wordings which will be added to this text," the minister said.
"Everyone deemed it useful that such a document exists, because
it makes it possible to hold a discussion not in the abstract but
in connection with specific wordings," he added. But he did not go
into details.
A source close to the negotiating process told Interfax that this
preamble records "the need for Nagorno-Karabakh to participate in
the subsequent stages of the talks, as well as the rights of nations
to self-determination."
The "Madrid principles" were adopted at the OSCE summit in 2007, and
to all intents and purposes the talks between Azerbaijan and Armenia
are taking place on the basis of them. According to this document,
it is proposed to return the territories around Nagorno-Karabakh
to Azerbaijan’s control and to grant the region a temporary status
providing for guarantees of security and autonomy. The document
also stipulates the creation of a corridor between Armenia and
Nagorno-Karabakh, the future determination of the unrecognized
republic’s definitive juridical status within the framework of a
vote, the right of all refugees and displaced persons to return home,
and international guarantees of security, including a peacekeeping
operation.
This is already the fifth meeting in the tripartite format. The first
was held in November 2008, when a declaration by the three presidents
was signed, confirming the goal of a political settlement of the
conflict on the basis of international law and with the intermediary
participation of the Minsk Group of the OSCE, and particularly its
co-chairmen -Russia, the United States, and France. Then, too, the
decision was adopted to activate the talks process. On the eve of the
Sochi meeting Sargsyan made a trip to Moscow, while Sergey Naryshkin,
head of the Russian Presidential Staff, visited Baku.
Goran Lennmarker, the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly’s special
representative for the conflicts in Georgia and Nagorno-Karabakh,
has assumed that the sides may reach a settlement this spring. This
was how he commented on the talks in Sochi. In an interview with the
Azerbaijani APA Agency he reported that "the sides are coming closer,
and the conclusion of an agreement on the conflict may become possible
this spring."
In the opinion of Aleksey Vlasov, general director of the Centre for
the Study of Political Processes in the CIS at Moscow State University,
everything depends on what meaning is invested in Stepanakert’s
involvement in the talks. "It is one thing if the sides simply listen
to Stepanakert’s position, and quite another thing if Nagorno-Karabakh
becomes a participant in the talks with equal rights.
This will mean a complete reformatting of Baku’s position," Vlasov
told Gazeta.ru.
Such a sharp turn of events gives rise to doubts in the expert: "In
recent weeks no statements by Azerbaijani officials have presaged
anything of the sort. Unless Yerevan offered Baku, in exchange for
this, specific dates for a troop withdrawal from the five regions of
Azerbaijan that Baku regards as having been occupied by Armenia."
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
