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Irish experience to guide search for solutions to 'frozen conflicts'

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  • Irish experience to guide search for solutions to 'frozen conflicts'

    Irish Times
    Dec 30 2011


    Irish experience to guide search for solutions to 'frozen conflicts'


    Twenty years after the end of the Soviet Union, Ireland is seeking
    ways of bringing peace to the jagged edges of the old empire, writes
    DANIEL MCLAUGHLIN

    IN GEORGIA, Azerbaijan and Moldova, rebel regions have run their own
    affairs since fighting free of government control in the early 1990s,
    but they are still locked in `frozen conflicts' that trap their people
    in political limbo, insecurity and poverty.

    Senior Irish officials say they intend to draw on experiences in
    Northern Ireland to help tackle these complex disputes when Ireland
    takes the chair of the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in
    Europe (OSCE) on January 1st.

    The 56-nation group is a key player in talks aimed at ending the
    conflicts, rebuilding trust between communities and ensuring the
    `frozen' disputes do not erupt into fighting - such as when Russia
    invaded Georgia in 2008 to stop Tbilisi reclaiming South Ossetia.

    South Ossetia shrugged off Tbilisi's control in a 1991-1992 war that
    claimed about 1,000 lives. In 1992-1993 the Black Sea region of
    Abkhazia also took up arms to break with Georgia, and some 10,000
    people died in the ensuing violence. After flooding the regions with
    troops in 2008, Russia - which had propped up both areas since the
    early 1990s - recognised them as sovereign states.

    Moscow accused OSCE monitors along the de-facto border between Georgia
    and South Ossetia of keeping secret Tbilisi's preparations to attack
    the breakaway region in 2008. The following year, Moscow refused to
    allow the OSCE mission to continue working in Georgia.

    But the OSCE is a co-chair of regular talks between Russia and Georgia
    in Geneva, and the US and EU are pressing Moscow to allow a full OSCE
    mission to return to Georgia.

    Pádraig Murphy, former Irish ambassador to Moscow, will next year
    co-chair the Geneva talks as a special representative for the South
    Caucasus. `Ireland's chairmanship faces a lot of challenges,' warned
    Georgia's foreign minister Grigol Vashadze.

    `Russia is constantly increasing its forces . . . There are more than
    10,000 occupying troops in both regions and a range of missile
    systems, tanks and all their other toys,' he said.

    `The main tasks now are to de-occupy Georgia and have Russia respect
    the ceasefire agreement of August 2008, and to return internally
    displaced persons and refugees in safety and dignity to their
    birthplaces and residences.'

    Mr Murphy's brief will also cover Nagorno-Karabakh, an ethnic-Armenian
    enclave in Azerbaijan that was at the centre of a 1988-1994 conflict
    that killed about 25,000 people.

    Fierce fighting between the neighbouring states also displaced about
    one million people and shooting incidents on the ceasefire line still
    claim lives each year. The issue stirs intense passions in Armenia and
    Azerbaijan, and no leader of either country has been willing to make
    the concessions necessary to agree even on the principles of a final
    peace deal.

    Armenia suspects that Azerbaijan might try to use force to reclaim
    Nagorno-Karabakh. Baku, meanwhile, accuses Yerevan of prolonging the
    stalemate by refusing to withdraw troops from Azeri territory.

    Both sides blame each other for the repeated failure of talks
    spearheaded by the OSCE's so-called Minsk Group of countries, which is
    chaired jointly by Russia, the US and France.

    And the search for a solution is not getting any easier. Ankara and
    close ally Azerbaijan are furious over a bid by French president
    Nicolas Sarkozy's party to make it illegal to deny that Turkey's mass
    killing of Armenians in 1915 was genocide. Turkish officials suggest
    Mr Sarkozy is wooing France's large Armenian diaspora before next
    year's elections, and Azeri politicians have accused Paris of bias
    towards Yerevan on Nagorno-Karabakh issues.

    `An arms race, escalating front-line clashes, vitriolic war rhetoric
    and a virtual breakdown in peace talks are increasing the chance
    Armenia and Azerbaijan will go back to war over Nagorno-Karabakh,' the
    International Crisis Group warned this year.

    Experienced diplomat Erwan Fouéré will be the Irish chairmanship's
    special representative to Moldova, where the OSCE is seeking a
    negotiated settlement over the separatist region of Transdniestria.

    This sliver of land beside the Dniestr River, wedged between the rest
    of Moldova and Ukraine, broke away from Chisinau's control in a 1992
    war that killed about 1,000 people.

    This Russian-backed region has just elected a successor to its
    president of 20 years, Igor Smirnov, who was widely accused of
    allowing Transdniestria to become a haven for organised crime. Its new
    leader, Yevgeny Shevchuk, has already dashed Chisinau's hopes of major
    change by ruling out reunification with the rest of Moldova.

    http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/world/2011/1230/1224309632857.html

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