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Nagorno-Karabakh Fails To Make Progress After 12 Years

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  • Nagorno-Karabakh Fails To Make Progress After 12 Years

    NAGORNO-KARABAKH FAILS TO MAKE PROGRESS AFTER 12 YEARS
    By Dan Shea

    dpa German Press Agency
    Dec 20 2006

    By Dan Shea, Moscow/Baku- Though negotiations are wrapped in secrecy
    to hide 12 years of failure, the former Soviet Union's bloodiest
    conflict pitting Armenia against Azerbaijan may be edging closer
    to talks that could yield peace - or destroy current diplomatic
    efforts entirely. Earlier this year, a raft of new proposals for
    Nagorno-Karabakh, a breakaway region in the oil-rich Caucasus republic
    of Azerbaijan, received rare positive assessments among international
    mediators in Moscow, Paris, Bucharest and Brussels.

    But despite several meetings during 2006 between Azeri President
    Ilham Aliyev and and Armenian President Robert Kocharyan, no progress
    appears to have been made on resolving the conflict.

    Aliyev has warned that if talks fail, "Azerbaijan will definitely
    reconsider its strategy, tactics and behaviour."

    The 4,400-square-kilometre enclave in western Azerbaijan - populated
    almost entirely by ethnic Armenians - was ravaged by war in 1988-94
    and is today occupied by Armenian troops.

    Underscoring the sensitivity of a conflict that left an estimated
    35,000 dead and threatens to reignite, the proposals made earlier
    this year were kept secret.

    Since hostilities ended, the Armenian leadership in Yerevan has
    insisted on independence for the region. Baku says it will allow "the
    greatest measure" of autonomy, but refuses to part with the enclave.

    "The position of Armenia is founded on dreams and illusions. They
    think a temporary military supremacy gives them the right to think
    about the separation of Nagorno-Karabakh from Azerbaijan," Aliyev says.

    Efforts aimed at talks come amid a strong flow of petrodollars into
    Aliyev's coffers, with BP's 4-billion-dollar Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan
    pipeline well into its second year of operation.

    President Aliyev has made it clear he wants to spend these funds on
    arms. Last summer he told his country's parliament that Azerbaijan's
    defence budget should surpass Armenia's entire state spending.

    Almost all the 500,000 Azeris that once lived in Nagorno-Karabakh
    having long since fled. The region's residents buy their food using
    the Armenian dram and the streets are patrolled by troops from Yerevan.

    But 12 years after the official end of fighting, Azeri leaders remain
    bitter over the scars left by the Soviet collapse and the ensuing war.

    Television commercials and billboards appeal in English to the BP
    workers in Baku, reminding them of Azeris displaced from their home
    villages in the exodus that accompanied the war.

    The presidential bookstore in Baku carries such titles as "The Myth
    of a Great Armenia" and "Blood Politics, Or the Philosophy of Revenge:
    Armenia in Azerbaijan."

    And under the Soviet-era television tower, perched on a promontory
    overlooking the skyscraper-studded city, is Martyrs' Alley, row
    after row of graves - most bearing photographs - of Azeris who died
    in Nagorno-Karabakh.

    The conflict's roots are found in the earliest days of the Soviet
    Union, when Lenin in 1923 created the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous
    District within the Soviet Socialist Republic of Azerbaijan, rather
    than Armenia, in an effort to win Turkish sympathies.

    But with Baku's perestroika-era leader Heidar Aliyev - the current
    president's late father - encouraging his countrymen to settle in
    the 95-per-cent Armenian region in the late 1980s, calls for an
    independent Nagorno-Karabakh found resonance in Moscow.

    A peaceful nationalist movement quickly turned violent. During and
    after the Soviet collapse, Yerevan and Baku vied for Russian support
    in equipping their armies as a full-scale war broke out.

    For six years the upper hand in the conflict was determined by the
    amount of weaponry Moscow supplied, Russian defence analyst Pavel
    Felgenhauer said.

    "Armenia had the advantage, then Azerbaijan, then Armenia again,"
    Felgenhauer said, adding that Armenia was able to decisively gain
    control of the region in 1993 after diplomatic relations between
    Moscow and Baku took a turn for the worse.

    With Armenian forces occupying nearly one-seventh of Azerbaijan in
    1994, peace talks began.

    For 12 years negotiations went nowhere, and the Nagorno-Karabakh
    question became the trump card in the politics of both countries.

    Armenian President Kocharyan was a leader in the breakaway region,
    and Azerbaijan's Ilham Aliyev rode to power on the coattails of his
    father, who promised to reclaim the lost territory.

    But although Armenian Foreign Minister Vardan Oskanyan earlier this
    year spoke of "a real possibility of a rapprochement" with the Azeri
    side, Baku now may prefer to hold out.

    Since neither side would want to resume the debilitating fighting,
    Azerbaijan's rising clout as a supplier of oil and gas in the Caucasus
    gives it the option of waiting until it would be guaranteed control
    over Nagorno-Karabakh.

    "Negotiations haven't led to anything, and they won't lead to
    anything," Felgenhauer says.
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