THE UN STRAITJACKET TURNED TO BE RAGGED BAKU IS CYNICALLY DISCREDITING INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS
Wednesday, 16 May 2012 13:04
As you know, in the period of 2012-2013 Azerbaijan became a
non-permanent member of UN Security Council, and in early May, it
assumed the chairmanship at this international structure. Yet in last
October, when a resolution on electing Azerbaijan a non-permanent
member of the UN Security Council was underway, we pointed out
that a new stage would actually start in the Armenian-Azerbaijani
confrontation, as the official Baku, having got the high international
rank, would not fail to use it to promote its own interests on the
Karabakh issue.
Actually, this scenario was very easy to suppose, given the previous
experience of the Azerbaijani leadership on the use of the tribunes of
various international organizations for misinforming the international
community on the essence of the Karabakh conflict and for getting
political dividends.
As the subsequent events showed, nothing unexpected has happened. What
happened was supposed to happen. Yet at the May 4 meeting of the
Security Council, in his obviously anti-Armenian speech, President
Aliyev practically defined the vector of Azerbaijan’s activity
within this organization for the next two years. Once again riding
the two favorite horses of Baku propaganda about the “20 percent
of the occupied territories of Azerbaijan” and “one million of
Azerbaijani refugees,” Aliyev accused Armenia of all the mortal sins,
including terrorism, especially that the topic of the Security Council
meeting was the struggle against international terrorism. The next
anti-Armenian action of the Azerbaijani party was its attempt to
deprive the Armenian representative at the UN, Karen Nazaryan, of a
speech at the May 10 meeting of the Security Council Counter-Terrorism
Committee, which was chaired by Azerbaijan. However, thanks to the
support of the Security Council member-states, the Armenian Ambassador
made his revelatory speech.
Let me remind that similar, if one may say diplomatic activities
of Azerbaijan have been conducted for a long time. Having lost
its faith in the readiness of the OSCE Minsk Group to resolve the
Karabakh problem in its own way, Azerbaijan has tried for many years
to transfer the settlement of the conflict to other international
structures, and above all – the to the UN. The reason, as often
mentioned, is pretty simple. First, the majority of the members
of this organization do not have a sufficient idea of the problem,
and hence it is easy to mislead them, capitalizing on the notorious
principle of territorial integrity, which is a kind of “sacred cow”
for many countries. Second, Azerbaijan can hope for the support by
Islamic countries, which in terms of religious solidarity will not
be burdened with at least an elementary analysis of the historical
and legal grounds of the Karabakh conflict.
I must say that in all this history with the election of Azerbaijan
a non-permanent member of the Security Council is seen as a kind
of mockery of both the UN itself and its declared principles. How
could a state that is responsible for the pogroms and killings of
the Armenian population, for the outbreak of a monstrous war against
self-determined Karabakh, during which weapons of mass destruction
prohibited by international law and thousands of foreign mercenaries
were used, including the Afghan mojahedins connected with the sadly
known terrorist organization Al-Qaeda, generally become a member of
the UN, not to mention its Security Council? Indeed, in accordance
with the UN Charter, one of the main goals of this organization is
to ensure international peace and security.
Isn’t it a paradox or rather a grimace of the present international
community that international peace and security must be ensured by
a state that represents a direct threat to regional peace and security?
Aliyev’s speech at the United Nations took place against a background
of intensive violation of the ceasefire in the conflict zone by
Azerbaijan, which acquired a mass and extremely threatening character
long ago. It is hardly worth considering that the relevant structures
of such a serious organization as the UN have no idea of the real
situation in the region and the destructive role that is played
here by Azerbaijan. Or they thought that the election of Azerbaijan
a non-permanent member of the UN Security Council would serve as a
kind of straitjacket for a completely high-handed aggressor, which
has long been ignoring the calls of the authoritative international
organizations, including the UN itself, to stop threatening with
a new war? If so, judging from the behavior of Azerbaijan at the
last meeting of the Security Council, they were badly mistaken. The
straitjacket turned to be ragged. Azerbaijan needs the high tribune of
the UN Security Council not for ephemeral, on the understanding of the
Baku authorities, “maintenance of international peace and security”,
but for a quite specific goal – to use the opportunities at the UN to
intensify its diplomacy and to resolve the Karabakh issue in its own
favor. The sooner it is understood at the UN, the better – for the
reputation of the organization itself, which Azerbaijan is actually
discrediting, and for the peoples of our region, which have become,
in fact, hostages of the adventurous policy of the Baku authorities
and of the criminal unscrupulousness of international organizations.
Leonid Martirossian
Editor-in-Chief of Azat Artsakh newspaper
http://artsakhtert.com/eng/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=683:the-un-straitjacket-turned-to-be-ragged-baku-is-cynically-discrediting-international-organizations&catid=3:all&Itemid=4