MEDIATORS STILL HOPEFUL ABOUT KARABAKH DEAL
By Emil Danielyan and Anna Saghabalian
Radio Liberty, Czech Republic
Oct 24 2007
International mediators said they still hope to broker a framework
peace accord on Nagorno-Karabakh before the presidential elections
in Armenia and Azerbaijan as they began yet another round of regional
shuttle diplomacy on Wednesday.
The chief U.S. Karabakh negotiator, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State
Matthew Bryza, insisted that the conflicting parties are "very close"
to fully agreeing on the basic principles of a Karabakh settlement
proposed by the OSCE Minsk Group.
President Robert Kocharian said earlier this month that despite
substantial progress made in Armenian-Azerbaijan peace talks,
the conflict is unlikely to be resolved before the Armenian and
Azerbaijani elections.
"Unlikely means less than 50 percent," Bryza told RFE/RL before he
and the Minsk Group’s French and Russian co-chairs went into talks
with Kocharian and Foreign Minister Vartan Oskanian. "It can mean 49
percent, 48 percent, which is maybe not much different than ‘likely.’"
"But we are realists and know that in the world of politics when an
election is approaching it’s more difficult to make concessions,"
he said.
Bryza’s French counterpart, Bernard Fassier, was likewise unsure about
chances of a near-term solution to the Karabakh dispute as he spoke
to RFE/RL after the mediators’ meeting with Oskanian. "If we were
the persons making the decision, my answer would definitely be yes,"
he said. "But the fact is that other persons are in charge of making
a compromise deal."
"I don’t know when they will be ready to do that," added Fassier.
The mediators hoped that Kocharian and Azerbaijan’s President Ilham
Aliev will meet again and take the final step towards mutual compromise
before the end of this year. But the two leaders pointedly declined to
hold such a meeting on the sidelines of a Commonwealth of Independent
States summit in Tajikistan earlier this month and are unlikely to
do so in the coming months.
"That doesn’t mean the process stops," insisted Bryza. "We are so
very close on just a few remaining technical issues. It would be a
shame if we didn’t reach some sort of a gentlemen’s agreement on this
framework that’s on the table."
"Whether the agreement comes before the elections or shortly after,
we are, as we say in American English, in the ballpark and it’s time
to put the ball in the net," he said.
Baku and Yerevan are understood to have already accepted the
main points of the Minsk Group’s existing peace plan. It calls
for a gradual resolution of the conflict would enable Karabakh’s
predominantly Armenian population to decide the disputed region’s
status in a referendum years after the liberation of surrounding
Azerbaijani territories. Diplomatic sources privy to the negotiating
process say the parties still disagree on practical modalities of the
proposed referendum as well as the timetable for Armenian withdrawal
from those territories.