Tatul Hakobyan

Will the Ahtisaari Plan Be a Guide for Settling O ther Frozen Conflicts?

There are a number of “frozen” conflicts on the planet that haven't reached a final resolution for dozens of years, first of all because of the uncompromising, rigid positions of the parties involved.

The Palestine, Kashmir, Abkhazia, South Ossetia, Transdnestria, Nagorno Karabakh, Kosovo, and other similar conflicts, of course, differ from each other in origins, historical past, and various specific features, but they have one principal commonality – the parties involved cannot reach an agreement on the issue of status.

No matter how hard they insist in Yerevan, Baku and Stepanakert or in Tbilisi and Sukhumi that the Karabakh and the Abkhazian conflicts differ from the Kosovo problem, all the same, it is the future status of Kosovo that might become a guide for settling other frozen conflicts, including the Nagorno Karabakh conflict. What does the international community offer to Kosovo? In essence, independence, but in order to make this status digestible to Serbia, in other words, to make sure that there are no winners or losers, the West has used the term “limited independence”.

On February 2, 2007, the UN Special Envoy, former President of Finland Martti Ahtisaari presented his package for the future status of Kosovo to the leaders of Serbia and Kosovo. Since 1999, when NATO air strikes stopped Serbia's crackdown on separatist ethnic Albanian rebels, Kosovo has been under United Nations Administration, and in practice Belgrade has lost governance over the province.

The Serbs don't consider any status for Kosovo that provides for the province's independence to be acceptable, while the Albanians won't accept any status short of independence. The Serbs consider Kosovo to be an indigenous Serbian land and the Albanians who have become the majority in the province over the years to be newcomers. In 1918 when Yugoslavia (Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, Montenegro, Macedonia, and Bosnia-Herzegovina) was formed, Kosovo, predominantly populated by Albanians, became a part of Serbia as an autonomous province.

By the end of the 1980s Slobodan Milosevic pushed for constitutional change amounting to suspension of autonomy for Kosovo. Later a campaign to expell Albanians was waged, followed by the NATO military intervention and consequently the majority of Kosovo's Serbs were expelled. Today Serbs make up only five percent of Kosovo's population of two million and they live compactly in the north of the province, in regions bordering Serbia.

Speaking after talks with Martti Ahtisaari in Belgrade, Serbian president Boris Tadic said that the plan in effect paved the way for Kosovo to become independent. The proposal “does not explicitly mention independence for Kosovo, but it also does not mention the territorial integrity of Serbia,” he said. “That fact alone, as well as some other provisions, opens the possibility for Kosovo's independence.”

It is envisaged that the international community will offer Kosovo a status which will enable the Kosovars – the Kosovo Albanians who account for 90 percent of Kosovo's 2 million people—to have the trappings of nationhood such as a flag, anthem, army, security forces and constitution and the right to apply for membership in international organizations. In other words, Kosovo will gain independence within the borders of Serbia but will have no vertical relations with Belgrade. On the other hand Kosovo will not be able to join Albania and thus the notion of “Greater Albania” will be removed from the agenda.

In the fall of 1997 the co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group presented Yerevan, Baku and Stepanakert with a “step-by step” settlement proposal according to which the territories under Nagorno Karabakh control, except for the Lachin corridor, were to be returned to Azerbaijan and the status of Nagorno Karabakh would be determined after several years. The first president of Armenia, the international community, and Azerbaijan realized that the most complex issue of the Karabakh settlement was the status, and for that reason the issue of status was left for the future. The 1997 proposal, which President Ter-Petrossian, though with serious reservations, considered acceptable in principle as a basis for negotiations, became one of the reasons for his subsequent resignation.

A year later, in the fall of 1998 the Minsk Group presented a renewed variant known as the “common state” proposal. If the 1997 “step-by-step” proposal was accepted by Baku and rejected by Stepanakert and the Robert Kocharyan-Vazgen Sargsyan wing of the Yerevan government, the renewed proposal was rejected by Baku. Yerevan and Stepanakert accepted, again with reservations, the “common state” proposal as a basis for negotiations. From the outset the document, though not very clearly, fixes the principle of the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan: “Nagorno Karabakh is a state and territorial entity in the form of a republic and constitutes a common state with Azerbaijan within its internationally recognized borders.” Essentially, through the “common state” formula, the international community tried to reconcile the conflicting principles of territorial integrity of states and self-determination of nations.

The status proposed for Kosovo bears some similarities to the proposals made by the Minsk Group mediators to the parties to the Nagorno Karabakh conflict over the last year. Kosovo doesn't get independence right away; however, it is clear to everyone that the province will not be a part of Serbia anymore. The same is true in the case of Nagorno Karabakh – the mediators propose to put the Armenian region under the control of international organizations control and to determine the status in the future, through a referendum.

Turning back to the Kosovo negotiations, I would like to note that the West – the United State and the “heavyweight” European countries are, in fact, advocates of Kosovo's independence. But Russia has stated on many occasions that it will not consent to a Kosovo status if Serbia opposes it. In other words, Russia opposes Kosovo's independence.

It should be noted that the Ahtisaari plan proposes wide autonomy for nearly 100,000 Serbs compactly residing in the north of Kosovo. The issue of Kosovo's status will be decided at the UN Security Council of which Russia is one of the five permanent members. That is, the Ahtisaari plan will not come into effect unless Russia consents to it. On the other hand, it is quite clear that the super powers generally solve problems among themselves at the expense of small nations. The fact that Russia supports Serbia today doesn't mean that it will support Serbia tomorrow as well. Is it impossible that as a result of a Moscow-Washington agreement Russia will accept the Ahtisaari plan for Kosovo? Of course, it's possible. Many things will depend on negotiations and the price of the bargains.

In any case, the Russians oppose the Ahtisaari plan for the time being. The other day Russia's Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, who is considered a likely successor to Vladimir Putin, stated that the Ahtisaari proposals are not great. Besides, Medvedev repeated Putin's words that the Kosovo example might set a precedent for other conflicts, evidently having in mind Abkhazia, South Ossetia and Transdnestria, whose independence is equally openly opposed by the United States and the Europeans.

Former Foreign Minister of Armenia Alexander Arzoumanian notes that as time goes by Nagorno Karabakh is coming to be small change in the relationships of various powers. “Nagorno Karabakh has been left out of the negotiating process and cannot take part in deliberations on its own future, and under circumstances in which Nagorno Karabakh is perceived as just a territory occupied by Armenia, there is a danger that in the event of one geopolitical development or another, the issue of Nagorno Karabakh might be solved ‘at the odd moment', as people say, within the context of addressing other bigger issues. This is the biggest danger, since no accidental resolution can ever be advantageous for both Armenia and Nagorno Karabakh,” Arzoumanian told journalists last Tuesday at a news conference.

At the same news conference, Arman Melikyan, advisor to the President of Nagorno Karabakh, said that there has been progress in the negotiating process. “The South Caucasus, where the conflict is taking place, has found itself at the crossroads of the interests of big powers. And numerous problems related to the Karabakh conflict are due to this reality,” Melikyan said.

Alexander Arzoumanian, too, emphasized that the complexity of settling the Karabakh conflict is conditioned by the fact that the South Caucasus lies within the sphere of interests of big powers. But he considered the present situation, in which the Karabakh side is isolated from the negotiations over its own fate, to be unacceptable. He blamed official Yerevan, first of all.

Former Commander of the Nagorno Karabakh Self-Defense Army Samvel Babayan believes that in order to register progress in the negotiations it is above all necessary to negotiate directly with Stepanakert and to place Nagorno Karabakh for a certain period of time under international control until a referendum on the status of Nagorno Karabakh is held. To achieve lasting peace, according to Babayan, it is necessary to demilitarize the region and create conditions for all geopolitical actors to compete here in the economic sphere.

“The United States, Russia, Europe, and the neighboring states should implement economic projects in our region. But we shouldn't become a servant to any of the powers and set ourselves up against others. We shouldn't try to accrue dividends from contradictions betweens super powers, either. I'm convinced that this is what our national interests require,” Babayan said.

Incidentally, during their most recent visit to the region (January 24-26), the Minsk Group co-chairmen drew parallels between the Nagorno Karabakh and the Kosovo issues. Russian co-chairman Yuri Merzlyakov, responding to a question about the Kosovo settlement in Stepanakert, stressed that he fully agreed with Vladimir Putin's statement that the Kosovo example might set a precedent for other conflicts in the CIS states.

French and American co-chairmen Bernard Fassier and Matthew Bryza stated that they opposed the idea of using the Kosovo model universally. “Each conflict has its specific features and complexities and for each a separate settlement should be found,” Bryza said.

The French co-chairman noted that each conflict had its own difficulties and it was necessary to resolve conflicts on the basis of the particular aspects of each. “At present we are trying to gradually create conditions for peace and we still hold the opinion that the Karabakh conflict should be resolved through peaceful means and for that we have to constantly speak about peace,” he said.

“Our task is to build a wall of peace, which is a very long process. And with every brick we consolidate the progress. We continue the construction of the wall of peace,” Fassier said.