Radio Free Europe, Czech Rep
Feb 14 2005
Armenia/Azerbaijan: Mediator Sees No Organized Settlement Policy In Occupied Lands
By Jean-Christophe Peuch
The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) last
week completed an unprecedented fact-finding mission into Azerbaijan’s
occupied territories to verify claims that Armenian authorities are
sending settlers to the area. The mission, which was supervised by
the three co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group, was the first of its
kind since the suspension of the 1988-94 Nagorno-Karabakh war. In an
exclusive interview with RFE/RL, France’s Minsk Group co-chairman,
Bernard Fassier, discussed the mission’s preliminary findings.
Prague, 14 February 2005 (RFE/RL) — For more than a week, experts
from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE)
toured the seven Azerbaijani administrative districts that ethnic
Armenian troops have occupied for the past 12 years.
Those include the regions of Kalbacar, Lacin, Qubadli, Fuzuli,
Cebrayil, Zangilan, and Agdam.
This is the first time since these territories fell into the hands
of ethnic Armenian forces in 1992-93 that the OSCE was authorized to
conduct a fact-finding mission there.
The eight-member mission was placed under the supervision of the
so-called Minsk Group of nations that has been mediating the Karabakh
conflict for the past 13 years on behalf of the OSCE. Since 1996,
the Minsk Group has been co-chaired by France, Russia, and the
United States.
France’s co-chair, Bernard Fassier, toured Azerbaijan’s occupied
territories with the OSCE experts. He told RFE/RL that the mission,
which had long been demanded by Azerbaijan, was made possible only
after arduous talks between Baku and Yerevan. Azerbaijan claims
the Armenian and Karabakh authorities have already sent some 23,000
settlers to the areas and demands that an end be put to what it says
is a deliberate policy of colonization.
“The determinant factor that made this mission possible — despite
Armenia’s earlier objections — was a compromise reached recently by
the two countries under the aegis of the Minsk Group co-chairs. The
main provision of the compromise was that Azerbaijan would suspend its
action at the United Nations in return for — among other things —
Armenia’s consent to that mission, the technicalities of which were
agreed to by both parties,” Fassier said.
In early 1993, ethnic Armenian forces were in full control of
Nagorno-Karabakh and had already secured the strategic southern
corridor of Lacin that links the separatist exclave to Armenia.
In March 1993, ethnic Armenian forces launched a two-pronged offensive
that drove Azerbaijan’s rag-tag army farther east and expelled hundreds
of thousands of Azerbaijanis and Kurds from their homes.
Kalbacar fell on 3 April 1993. Agdam, Fuzuli, Cebrayil, and other
cities and towns followed soon thereafter.
The Armenian victory, achieved in just four months, precipitated the
collapse of Azerbaijani President Abulfaz Elchibey’s regime. Recalled
from Moscow in the wake of a military coup, Soviet Politburo member
Heidar Aliyev soon took power in Baku and precipitately negotiated
a truce that came into effect in May 1994.
As a prerequisite to any negotiations on the status of Karabakh,
Azerbaijan demands that ethnic Armenian troops leave all occupied
territories in line with a string of resolutions approved by the
UN Security Council. But Armenia, which also represents Karabakh at
the peace talks, wants the future of the enclave to be negotiated in
parallel with the troop withdrawal.
Azerbaijan claims the Armenian and Karabakh authorities have already
sent some 23,000 settlers to the areas and demands that an end be
put to what it says is a deliberate policy of colonization.
But French Ambassador Fassier told RFE/RL that, with one noticeable
exception, Armenian migration into the occupied territories seems to
be largely spontaneous and improvised.
“Contrary to what many people thought, there doesn’t seem to be a
deliberate, large-scale plan to settle those areas. One exception,
however, is the Lacin district. In Lacin, one can say that the
[Armenian] settlement is being encouraged and sponsored. But with
regard to the six remaining districts, its seems that up to 80 to
90 percent of settlers have gone there either on their own or with
the support of local nongovernmental organizations or the [Armenian]
diaspora. Except for Lacin, there is no large-scale involvement from
[the Nagorno-Karabakh capital of] Stepanakert, even less so from
Yerevan,” Fassier said.
Although the OSCE mission had no mandate to conduct a census, Fassier
believes the number of Armenian settlers populating the occupied
territories roughly matches the estimates given by Azerbaijani
authorities.
The French diplomat said the largest group of settlers is made up of
Armenian refugees who fled Azerbaijan before the Karabakh war broke out
in 1988 and in the early months of the conflict. The second-largest
group is composed of victims of the December 1988 earthquake that
leveled the Armenian city of Spitak and partially destroyed Leninakan,
Stepanavan, and Kirovakan.
“Finally, there is a third and much smaller group that consists of
people who have fled Armenia for economic reasons, or who live in
mountainous areas of Armenia and come on a seasonal basis to these
more temperate areas for cattle-breeding purposes. During the winter
season, these families come down from their mountains to graze their
few cows or sheep in these more temperate zones,” Fassier said.
Fassier noted that most Armenian settlers are apparently receiving
no assistance whatsoever from Yerevan or Stepanakert. He said the
precarious Armenian settlements, generally made up of a few families,
remain isolated from each other because there are neither roads nor
any means of communication.
With the exception of Lacin, no organized effort has been made to
restore infrastructure destroyed during the war. Also, Fassier said,
no reconstruction program has been initiated and many settlers continue
to live in appalling conditions more than 10 years into the cease-fire.
“In many areas there is no electricity and poverty predominates. I
wouldn’t say people live. Rather, they are surviving in half-destroyed
walls topped by a tin roof. To survive, these families rely on
small gardens or plots of land that offer only limited agricultural
possibilities. Sometimes, they also rely on what a few fruit
orchards that have been in a state of neglect for the past 10 years
are still able to produce. In the most extreme situations there is
no electricity and just a hole in the ground, a fountain or a well
to draw water from. In areas where conditions are slightly better,
accumulators allow for just enough electricity to supply a single
bulb. In other areas there are small generators. Sometimes electricity
is either imported from Karabakh or supplied by an Armenian military
base nearby,” Fassier said.
Due to its key strategic importance as a land bridge between Karabakh
and Armenia, Yerevan insists that the notion of returning the Lacin
corridor to Azerbaijan is a nonnegotiable issue.
In Lacin, Fassier said, migrants live in much better conditions
then in other occupied lands. The reconstruction rate is nearing 50
percent. Schools have been built with government support, water and
electricity supplies progressively restored, and local administrations
set up — all things that would sustain Baku’s claims of an organized
settlement policy.
The OSCE experts are due to present their final report to the Minsk
Group co-chairs. The latter will then add their own recommendations
and political conclusions before passing on the report to the other
Minsk Group members and the OSCE Permanent Council in Vienna —
tentatively scheduled for the second half of March.