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Prospects For Karabakh Peace Recede After OSCE Summit

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  • Prospects For Karabakh Peace Recede After OSCE Summit

    PROSPECTS FOR KARABAKH PEACE RECEDE AFTER OSCE SUMMIT
    Emil Danielyan

    Jamestown.org
    http://www.jamestown.org/programs/edm/
    Eurasia Daily Monitor
    Dec 16 2010

    The prospects for resolving the Karabakh conflict are as uncertain
    as ever after the inability of Armenia and Azerbaijan's presidents
    to reach any tangible agreements on the margins of the Organization
    for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) summit in Astana on
    December 1-2. It marked an apparent failure of the latest international
    effort to facilitate a Karabakh settlement spearheaded by Russia and
    President, Dmitry Medvedev, in particular.

    Medvedev invested considerable time and energy in the peace process,
    hosting seven face-to-face meetings between his Armenian and
    Azerbaijani counterparts since taking office in 2008. Following
    the most recent of those talks held in Astrakhan, southern Russia
    on October 27, Medvedev expressed "moderate optimism" that the two
    sides would make decisive progress towards peace in time for the OSCE
    summit. That announcement was followed by a new flurry of activity
    by the Russian, US and French diplomats co-chairing the OSCE's Minsk
    Group on Karabakh. Mediators shuttled between Baku and Yerevan in late
    November after meeting with Russian Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov,
    in Moscow. On November 22, Lavrov had also held a trilateral meeting
    with his Armenian and Azerbaijani counterparts (Regnum, ITAR-TASS,
    November 22).

    Presidents Serzh Sargsyan of Armenia and Ilham Aliyev of Azerbaijan
    did not even meet in Astana and only signed a joint statement there
    with Medvedev, French Prime Minister, Francois Fillon, and US Secretary
    of State, Hillary Clinton.

    According to the statement, the signatories "agreed that the time has
    come for more decisive efforts to resolve the Karabakh conflict,"
    adding "They further agreed that a peaceful, negotiated settlement
    will bring stability and security and is the only way to bring real
    reconciliation to the peoples of the region." The statement added
    that the mediators urged Aliyev and Sargsyan to "focus with renewed
    energy on the issues that still remain in the Basic Principles"
    of a peaceful settlement (http://summit2010.osce.org, December 1).

    It was a clear indication that the conflicting parties had failed to
    move further forward in ironing out their disagreements over those
    principles. Aliyev and Sargsyan made this even more evident by trading
    bitter recriminations in their speeches during the two-day summit.

    Aliyev accused the Armenians of committing "war crimes and a genocide"
    against Karabakh's Azeri population during the 1991-1994 war and
    dragging out peace talks since then (APA, December 1).

    Sargsyan, for his part, alleged that Azerbaijan had unleashed a
    "policy of ethnic cleansing and fully-fledged military aggression"
    against the Karabakh Armenians and has now "no interest" in the
    conflict's resolution. More importantly, Sargsyan threatened to
    formally recognize Karabakh as an independent state if Baku acts on
    its threats to try to win back the disputed territory and Azerbaijani
    districts surrounding it by force (Armenian Public Television, December
    2). Sargsyan repeated this threat during a December 10 summit in Moscow
    of the Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO).

    Speaking in the Kazakh capital, Clinton said the mediators and the
    parties must "renew our efforts toward a settlement in Karabakh" that
    would be based on six general principles articulated by the US, French
    and Russian presidents in a joint statement in July 2009 issued after
    their talks in L'Aquila, Italy (www.armenialiberty.org, December 1).

    Among those principles are the return of the Armenian-controlled
    territories around Karabakh to Azerbaijan and an "interim status"
    for Karabakh itself, which would guarantee its "security and
    self-governance." The proposed peace framework also envisages that
    Karabakh's final status would be determined through "a legally binding
    expression of will."

    Crucial details of this formula are contained in the still unpublicized
    (and repeatedly modified) peace proposals submitted by the Minsk Group
    co-chairs to the warring sides for the past five years. The parties
    have disagreed, at various points, on the timetable for Armenian troop
    withdrawal from the occupied lands, the status of a land corridor
    between Armenia and Karabakh and the timing of a future referendum on
    self-determination in Karabakh. The latter issue now appears to be
    the main area of contention. Baku has insisted, at least until now,
    that no specific date should be set for the vote. According to one of
    the classified US State Department documents disclosed by WikiLeaks,
    Aliyev complained to a visiting top US official in February 2010
    that Yerevan wants a referendum date to be fixed in the text of
    the peace accord. Also, in his public pronouncements, the Azeri
    leader has repeatedly claimed that Karabakh's predominantly ethnic
    Armenian population would only be able to determine the extent of the
    territory's autonomy within Azerbaijan in the proposed referendum. The
    Armenian side denies this, saying that the Minsk Group plan allows
    for international recognition of Karabakh's secession from Azerbaijan.

    This apparent impasse and other disagreements implies an uncertain
    future for the Karabakh negotiating process amid what many experts
    believe is a growing risk of another Armenian-Azeri war. Both Russia
    and Western powers continue to voice strong opposition to a military
    solution to the dispute, which is increasingly threatened by Aliyev.

    The latter regularly points to his government's soaring defense
    spending, due to reach a new record high of $3.1 billion in 2011,
    compared with only $405 million budgeted for Armenia's armed forces.

    Armenia will continue to seek to offset the Azeri military build-up
    by using its military alliance with Russia, which it upgraded earlier
    this year. A new defense pact signed by the two nations in late August
    commits Moscow to supplying its South Caucasus ally with "modern and
    compatible weaponry and special military hardware." Both Yerevan and
    Karabakh's ethnic Armenian leadership now seem to regard renewed war
    as a real possibility.

    The Karabakh Armenian army held in mid-November what it described
    as its largest ever military exercise just several kilometers away
    from Azeri army positions east of Karabakh. A uniform-clad Sargsyan,
    who watched the maneuvers with his senior army generals, used the
    occasion to warn that Baku will be dealt a "devastating and final"
    blow if it resorts to military action (www.news.am, November 14).




    From: A. Papazian
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