ENERGY AT ROOT OF KARABAKH ACCORD
By Nikolaus von Twickel
Moscow Times
Nov 5 2008
Russia
The presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan have signed a declaration
on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict at a meeting with President Dmitry
Medvedev in a sign of the Kremlin’s growing role and the importance
of energy politics in the South Caucasus.
Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan and Azeri President Ilham Aliyev
signed the largely symbolic document at Medvedev’s Maiendorf residence,
just outside Moscow on Saturday.
Armenia has traditionally been a staunch ally of Russia, while
energy-rich Azerbaijan has maintained friendly ties with Georgia,
but Moscow has been looking for greater cooperation with Azerbaijan
on energy issues.
The five-point document, published on the Kremlin’s web site, says
both countries will step up efforts to find a peaceful solution over
Nagorno-Karabakh, an ethnic Armenian enclave inside Azerbaijan that
broke away after a bloody conflict in the early 1990s that killed
more than 30,000 and displaced more than 1 million.
The declaration is the first such document signed by the heads of
the two states since Russia mediated a cease-fire agreement in 1994.
While it stresses the need for a political settlement based on
international law, the document does not contain any significant
commitments, such as to forego the use of force, nor does it mention
the conflicting issues at the heart of the conflict, territorial
integrity and national self-determination.
The outcome of the meeting was not as significant as some may have
hoped.
"This was not much different than dozens of meetings before," Svante
Cornell, research director at the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute, a
joint U.S.-Swedish think tank, said Tuesday by telephone from Tbilisi,
Georgia. "All we have seen is basically two leaders committing
themselves to solving the conflict."
Alexei Malashenko, an analyst with the Moscow Carnegie Center, said
the declaration was largely ceremonial.
"The fact that Medvedev [presided over the talks) just means that both
sides accept Russia as mediator," Malashenko said Tuesday. "Russia
needed an urgent rehabilitation as peacekeeper in the region."
Moscow’s relations with the West worsened dramatically after it sent
soldiers and tanks deep into Georgia to repel a Georgian military
attack to reclaim its breakaway region of South Ossetia in August.
The declaration also says negotiations should continue within the
framework of the so-called Minsk Group, a 12-member body headed
jointly by Russia, France and the United States, and overseen by the
Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.
U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Matthew Bryza and French
Ambassador Bernard Fassier were at Maiendorf, an OSCE spokesman said
by telephone from Vienna.
Bryza, the senior U.S. diplomat overseeing the South Caucasus region,
praised the result.
"My country fully supports this document. The declaration shows that
both presidents can work seriously towards solving this conflict,"
he said, Interfax reported Monday.
Cornell said the declaration was a show of force by the Kremlin
capitalizing on the weakness of the West, as the Georgian war in
August, the global financial crisis and the leadership change in
the United States would all work to cripple Western influence in
the region.
"There is a new geopolitical situation now," he said.
Russia, he said, was offering a solution that would mean a loss of
independence for Azerbaijan, possibly through the deployment of a
Moscow-sponsored peacekeeping force on its territory.
Cornell said Moscow was probably eyeing a "common state" solution,
something that had been on the negotiating table back in the 1990s.
This proposal, which had been rejected by Baku, focuses on bringing
Azerbaijan and Nagorno-Karabakh together in a confederation.
Carnegie’s Malashenko said that while its influence in the region
has grown, Russia would not go it alone.
"To solve this conflict, you need more than one mediator; you need
a group of mediators," he said. "Moscow won’t act outside the format
of the Minsk Group."
Malashenko also denied that the talks might herald a weakening of
Moscow’s traditional support for Armenia.
"I cannot imagine that one country will give one-sided support to
one party, because this is impossible," he said.
Both Azerbaijan and Armenia depend on trade routes through Georgia.
Moscow has recently been courting Azerbaijan, which wants to sell
more gas to Russia.
Medvedev signed a cooperation agreement with Aliyev in Baku in July,
and in Moscow this September both leaders discussed direct talks
between Azerbaijan and Armenia over Nagorno-Karabakh.
Europe has also been making overtures to Azerbaijan as a vital supplier
to a proposed new gas pipeline, which would reduce Western dependence
on Russian energy.
The Nabucco pipeline project has been backed both by the European
Union and the United States.
EU Energy Commissioner Andris Piebalgs will travel to Turkey and
Azerbaijan this Wednesday to show Europe’s commitment to the project,
The Associated Press reported.
Moscow has worried the EU by negotiating with Turkmenistan and
Kazakhstan to commit to sending their Caspian Sea gas through Russia.
It is also pushing South Stream, a rival pipeline project by
state-controlled Gazprom, which is slated to cost some $13 billion.