Itar-Tass, Russia
March 3, 2011 Thursday 4:48 PM EST
Karabakh meeting will determine further settlement steps – FM
MOSCOW March 3
The Sochi March 5 meeting of the presidents of Russia, Armenia and
Azerbaijan will determine further steps towards the Nagorno-Karabakh
settlements, Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich said on
Thursday.
“In 2010 the tripartite meetings [involving the presidents of Russia,
Azerbaijan and Armenia] were held in Sochi on January 25, in St.
Petersburg on June 17 and in Astrakhan on October 27. In our view,
these contacts allowed the parties to bring closer their positions and
facilitated the strengthening of confidence-building measures,” the
diplomat said.
“While in Astrakhan, the presidents of Azerbaijan and Armenia
expressed readiness to continue their work on key principles of the
Nagorno-Karabakh settlement on the basis of a project, which had been
discussed there,” the spokesman noted.
“We believe that at the upcoming Sochi March 5 meeting, the presidents
will have chances to review the situation in between the summit and
determine further concrete steps in order to find mutually acceptable
solutions to the Nagorno-Karabakh problem,” Lukashevich pointed out.
The landlocked mountainous region of Nagorno-Karabakh is the subject
of an unresolved dispute between Azerbaijan, in which it lies, and its
ethnic Armenian majority, backed by neighbouring Armenia.
In 1988, towards the end of Soviet rule, Azerbaijani troops and
Armenian secessionists began a bloody war, which left the de facto
independent state in the hands of ethnic Armenians when a truce was
signed in 1994.
Negotiations have so far failed to produce a permanent peace
agreement, and the dispute remains one of post-Soviet Europe’s “frozen
conflicts.” With the break-up of the Soviet Union, in late 1991,
Karabakh declared itself an independent republic, further escalating
the conflict into a full-scale war. That de facto status has not been
recognised elsewhere.
In a December 2006 referendum, declared illegitimate by Azerbaijan,
the region approved a new constitution. Nonetheless, there have since
been signs of life in the peace process, with occasional meetings
between the Armenian and Azerbaijani presidents. Significant progress
was reported at talks between the leaders in May and November 2009,
but progress then stalled, and tension began rising again as of 2010.
The OSCE Minsk Group was created in 1992 by the Conference on Security
and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE, now Organization for Security and
Co-operation in Europe (OSCE)) to encourage a peaceful, negotiated
resolution to the conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia over
Nagorno-Karabakh. The Minsk Group is headed by Russia, France and the
United States.
An additional format had been created over the Karabakh settlement –
Russia plays a mediating role. The presidents of three countries met
in Astrakhan in October 2010.
They adopted a joint declaration after the meeting. “This is a special
declaration on the enhancement of confidence-building measures,”
Medvedev said, adding that the document envisioned “an exchange of
prisoners of war and the return of the bodies.”
“Having confirmed the provisions of the joint Declaration signed in
Moscow on November 2, 2008, the presidents stressed that the
resolution of the conflict by political and diplomatic means requires
further efforts to strengthen the ceasefire and military
confidence-building measures,” the joint statement said.
“To this end, the presidents of Azerbaijan and Armenia agreed, as the
first step, to exchange prisoners of war and return the bodies of
those killed without delay with the assistance of the co-chairmen of
the OSCE Minsk Group and the International Committee of the Red Cross,
as well as to be guided by these approaches in the future, proceeding
from the solely humanitarian nature of such issues,” the document
said.
Moscow has suggested preliminarily fixing the progress reached in
respect of the document on the basic principles of Nagorno-Karabakh
settlement within the framework of the OSCE Minsk Group.
“The continuing work on the so-called basic principles has produced
certain results in finding the formula that can allow the parties to
fix their consent at this point,” Lavrov said earlier.
He said, however, that this did not mean that the problem would be
solved once the basic principles were approved.
“The parties are taking part in this work with a clear understanding
that after the basic principles it would be necessary to draft a legal
document – a peace agreement – anyway,” Lavrov added.
“Not all of the basic principles have been agreed, but as far as a
considerable portion of the text there is an understanding that we
have practically reached compromised-based formula,” the minister
said.
“We proposed a very simple thing that two or three questions that have
not been agreed yet should be stated as requiring further discussion
and that it should be written that no final agreement can be reached
without these questions,” Lavrov said.
“At this point this would make it possible to fix the progress reached
on the overwhelming portion of the text and thus state what has been
achieved up to date,” he said.
“We were supported by the co-chairmen. We hope that such realistic
approach based on a pragmatic assessment of the current situation will
eventually be supported,” Lavrov said.
Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan said the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict
might be settled only by a referendum.
“I’m sure that the conflict may be settled only by peaceful means. And
the only way is to conduct a referendum in Nagorno-Karabakh or to
recognise the results of the 1991 referendum, which was held in full
compliance with the Soviet Union legislation and international law,”
Sargsyan said.
From: A. Papazian