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Tatul Hakobyan

Mediators Have Declassified the Settlement Principles

Kocharyan Makes Unprecedented Concessions on Karabakh but Aliyev Demands More

The oddest thing at this juncture of the Karabakh settlement process is the behavior of Nagorno Karabakh President Arkady Ghukasyan. It has been more than a week now since the principles of the Karabakh conflict settlement were made public (those presented to Presidents Robert Kocharyan and Ilhan Aliyev last May by the co-chairmen of the OSCE Minsk Group and the accompanying senior diplomats from Russia, France and the United states in the hope that an agreement between the presidents would be reached during their meeting in Bucharest in early June). Ghukasyan, however, seems to be in no hurry to publicly state his views on a matter that directly concerns the future of the territory he governs.

First, we remind you the main principles of the framework agreement in question:

Phased withdrawal of Armenian armed forces from the Azerbaijani territories surrounding Nagorno Karabakh, with special modalities for Kelbajar and Lachin districts.
Determination of the final legal status of Nagorno Karabakh through a popular vote or a referendum at some point in the future.
Certain interim arrangements to be made to enable Nagorno Karabakh to interact with the outside world.
Deployment of an international peacekeeping force.
International financial assistance to be made available for de-mining, reconstruction, and resettlement of internally displaced persons in the formerly occupied territories and the war-affected regions of Nagorno-Karabakh.
These principles did not come as news to the experts and journalists who deal with the Nagorno Karabakh conflict resolution, much less to the government officials. Similar principles were contained in the two peace proposals ("step-by-step" and "package") presented to the parties in 1997 and in the 1998 "common state" proposal. The news is, perhaps, the referendum idea, and, if we are to believe foreign minister Vartan Oskanian, " Those items over which the presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan continue to disagree do not include a referendum; that concept has been agreed to by the presidents. The area of disagreement between the presidents has to do with the sequence in which the consequences of the military conflict are removed."

In their report to the OSCE Permanent Council, the Minsk Group co-chairs clearly state that they: "haven't tried to settle all the aspects of the conflict in one stage, we have been guided instead by the principle of achieving a significant progress but leaving the settlement of some extremely difficult issues for the future, through further negotiations." Even more clear cut is that, as in the fall of 1997, the mediators are proposing to leave the issue of the status of Nagorno Karabakh, in this case a referendum or a popular vote, for the future. In fact, according to the most recent proposal, Armenian forces are to withdraw from all the territories under their control with the exception of Kelbadjar and Lachin. And Kelbadjar is to be returned after the referendum is held.

Regarding the "phased withdrawal of Armenian armed forces from the Azerbaijani territories surrounding Nagorno Karabakh, with special modalities for Kelbajar and Lachin districts," mentioned in the co-chairs' statement, Vartan Oskanian commented, "This general formulation has two levels: first is the issue of Lachin regarding which the negotiated text clearly states that there must be 'a corridor linking Nagorno-Karabakh to Armenia'. For Armenia, it's very clear that this corridor must have the same status as Nagorno-Karabakh. The second level concerns Kelbadjar. For Armenia, this also is clear: based on security concerns, Kelbajar can be returned only after the referendum is conducted and the final status of Nagorno-Karabakh is determined. Azerbaijan's position is different on Kelbajar; this is a disagreement that the co-chairs mentioned in their report."

According to American co-chairman Matthew Bryza, the withdrawal of the Armenian forces from the occupied territories is an important element of the core principles. " Would an Armenian troop pull-out reduce tension? Well, sure as hell it would. That's why it's a core element of our core principles. But the Armenians aren't just going to pull back the troops because we say, 'Golly, gee, that would help reduce tension.' They'll do it if they get something for it and that's precisely what these core principles are all about. That is why we said that the trade-offs that would have to be made are so significant politically that it requires the head of state to make the trade-off," Matthew Bryza told RFE/RL in an interview last week and added: "What gets difficult is how you correlate the withdrawal, or the redeployment, of Armenian troops with the timing of a vote on the future status of Karabakh."

Let us turn for a moment to the1997 so-called "step-by-step" proposal that Armenia's first president accepted as a basis for negotiations with certain reservations. Levon Ter-Petrossian considered that it was the maximum for the moment, that it would be impossible to get more, that Armenia had no allies with regard to independence of Nagorno Karabakh or its unification with Armenia.

During the well-known January 7-8, 1998 session of the National Security Council (we were told the following by a participant of that meeting), Arkady Ghukasyan, Serge Sargsyan and Robert Kocharyan disagreed with Levon Ter-Petrossian. Ter-Petrossian then asked Ghukasyan, "What do you want-give it to us clearly stated in writing." Ghukasyan responded, "We will hand it over to you in a week." On January 17, 1998 a draft agreement was brought from Stepanakert, which, according to the Nagorno Karabakh authorities was supposed to be signed by Azerbaijan and NKR and which would grant Karabakh a status even higher than independence from the point of view of international law - independence guaranteed by Armenia, Azerbaijan, the United States, and the European Union. No less impressive was the map attached to the draft agreement envisaging 8,000 square kilometers of territory for NKR, including Kelbadjar, Lachin and Kubatlu.

A great deal has been written about the events that followed; we will review them briefly. Ter-Petrossian was labeled as a betrayer of the national interests of Armenia and Karabakh; he resigned and the Karabakh arm of the government with its victorious program came to power. Since the regime change, the "independent Karabakh with 8,000 square kilometers of territory" draft has never been put on the negotiating table. That is why Arkady Ghukasyan's silence is hard to understand.

After Matthew Bryza made the confidential principles of the settlement public, the Armenian president's spokesman and the Foreign Ministry made statements emphasizing in particular that "Armenia has accepted the proposals put on the table in Bucharest, whereas Azerbaijan has rejected them." Moreover, " Armenia believes that Azerbaijan's wavering on these principles is a serious obstacle to progress in the negotiations. If this policy continues, Armenia will insist that Azerbaijan conduct direct negotiations with Nagorno-Karabakh," the foreign ministry statement reads.

It is not completely clear which party rejected the co-chairs' most recent proposal. Neither the co-chairs' statement nor Matthew Bryza's interviews elaborate on that. The co-chairs only state that the presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan were unable to reach an agreement. "The co-chairs have exerted all of the creativity and all the negotiating energy that they could and they have gotten this framework of core principles as honed as possible in their judgment, such that the presidents, in their mind, need a little time to think things over and decide whether or not they can accept or adjust this framework," the co-chairs stated hopelessly. "We see no point now in continuing the intensive shuttle diplomacy, which we've engaged in over several months. We see no point either in initiating additional meetings between the presidents, unless they demonstrate sufficient political will to settle the remaining differences."

Declassifying the settlement principles was met with little enthusiasm in Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Nagorno Karabakh; indeed, all three parties have evinced a certain displeasure. Nevertheless, Yerevan insists that has rejected the co-chairs' proposal yet another time Baku and Baku blames Yerevan for the failure.

The chairman of the Commission on Foreign Relations of the Parliament of NKR, Vahram Atanesyan, believes that the "document put on the negotiating table is not favorable to any of the conflicting parties and the diplomatic war between the parties is all about which of the parties will reject the proposed principles."

According to the parliamentarian, NKR authorities cannot be included in the negotiating process and bear the responsibility. "At this moment Nagorno Karabakh cannot be included in the negotiating process, since Nagorno Karabakh has not been officially included in what was going on, in what preceded the Bucharest meeting and is going on now. And since it has not been officially included in these processes it cannot bear responsibility for what is on the negotiating table. NKR bears official responsibility for the maintenance of the cease-fire regime established by two 1994 agreements and is fulfilling its obligations," Atanesyan said.

Political scientist Zardusht Alizade from Azerbaijan told me in a telephone conversation that the co-chairs' statement had aroused displeasure in Baku and a new wave of interpretations. "Azerbaijan cannot agree to the idea of a referendum if it is held only in Nagorno Karabakh or only among the Karabakh Armenians, since it will contradict the Constitution of Azerbaijan. So, in order to force the Azerbaijani public to agree to the referendum it will first be necessary to hold a nation-wide referendum to amend the present Constitution. It seems unbelievable today that the Azerbaijani society might agree to that," Alizade said.

He also predicted, "After the co-chairs 'have washed their hands of it' a protracted period of freezing the conflict will begin, no initiatives will appear, and the parties will continue to blame each other and the mediators."

Stepan Safaryan from the Armenian Center for National and International Studies qualifies the statements by the president's spokesman and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs as clear displeasure and blackmail aimed at the United States. "The Armenian authorities have indirectly accused Bryza of making statements undermining their positions. They have found themselves in panic, for from the beginning they calculated that this proposal, too, would be rejected by Azerbaijan and would be kept secret from the public, as was the case with the 2001 Key West negotiations, and that the public at large, the opposition and even the political forces supporting Kocharyan would have no grounds to accuse him of acting against the interests of Armenia and Nagorno Karabakh, of not fulfilling his 1998 promises (at that time Kocharyan and his insurgent teammates promised the Armenian public an independent Nagorno Karabakh with 8,000 square kilometers of territory). In that case they would have been able to maintain power under the guise of patriotism, nationalism and exploiting this mobilizing the entire Armenian people super task. Something they have successfully done for eight years now," he said.

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