OSCE TO DISCUSS ‘FROZEN CONFLICTS’ AT BELGIUM MEETING
By Jan Sliva, Associated Press Writer
Associated Press Worldstream
December 4, 2006 Monday 11:50 AM GMT
Belgium’s foreign minister believes "hope is emerging" for a lasting
solution to the ongoing conflict in Azerbaijan’s Nagorno-Karabakh
region, as an international security organization opened a conference
Monday.
"Frozen" conflicts, or long-lasting disputes in ex-Soviet republics,
are on the agenda at the two-day meeting of foreign ministers from
the 56-member Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.
The meeting will also assess Kazakhstan’s candidacy for 2009
chairmanship of the trans-Atlantic security group, backed by Russia
and many other European states but opposed by the United States.
The group will focus on conflicts in the separatist Georgian
regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, in the pro-Russian separatist
Trans-Dniester province of Moldova, and in the Nagorno-Karabakh.
"Hope is emerging especially as concerning Nagorno-Karabakh," said
Belgian Foreign Minister Karel De Gucht, whose country holds the
Vienna, Austria-based OSCE’s rotating presidency. "The question of
frozen conflicts cannot be definitively solved here in Brussels, but
(all sides) need to restart negotiations that were broken off."
Armenia and Azerbaijan are discussing terms of holding a referendum on
the status of the Nagorno-Karabakh, a mountainous region in Azerbaijan
that has been under control of Armenian and ethnic Armenian Karabakh
forces since the 1994 end of a separatist war.
Years of negotiation have produced little visible sign of progress in
resolving the dispute, which prompted Azerbaijan to close its borders
with Armenia. But the presidents of both countries said this week
that significant progress has been made.
Goran Lennmarker, chairman of the OSCE’s parliamentary assembly,
described the shift as a ‘golden opportunity’ which must be seized
at the meeting.
The ministers will also debate the application of Kazakhstan to assume
the rotating one-year chairmanship of the organization in 2009.
The OSCE is split on Kazakhstan’s candidacy, with ex-Soviet republics
and many other European nations backing it but the United States and
Britain wary of the Central Asian country’s human rights record.
One possibility, OSCE officials said, would be to push Kazakhstan’s
presidency back to 2011 and press the country to conduct more reforms
in the meantime. Western nations are eager to increase cooperation
with Kazakhstan, which has huge natural gas resources, but there is
concern about the authoritarian rule of President Nursultan Nazarbayev.
"I fully support Kazakhstan’s bid for chairmanship bid," Lennmarker
said.
The OSCE, a leading international security organization founded in
1973, is concerned particularly with conflict prevention, election
observing, crisis management and rehabilitation of post-conflict areas.