NAGORNO-KARABAKH PRESIDENT DISPUTES FIRES AND NUMBERS, OIL AND UN, IN EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW WITH INNER CITY PRESS
Byline: Matthew Russell Lee, Correspondent at the UN
Inner City Press, NY
Nov 14 2006
UNITED NATIONS, November 13 — Of the so-called frozen conflicts
in the world, the one in the Nagorno-Karabakh region in Azerbaijan,
claimed by Armenia, heated up this Fall — literally.
In August and September 2006, Azerbaijan and Armenia traded volleys
of draft resolutions in the UN General Assembly, about a series of
fires in the Nagorno-Karabakh region which on most maps is Azerbaijan,
but is not under Azeri control.
The subtext of the fight was that Azerbaijan wants the dispute to
be addressed in the UN General Assembly, while Armenia prefers the
ten-year process before the Organization for Security and Cooperation
in Europe, the OSCE. In the UN General Assembly these frozen conflicts
are often treated as footnotes, particularly to a press corps which
covers the Security Council in the most minute detail, at the expense
of most other activities undertaken by the world body.
Last week Inner City Press sat down for an interview with the president
of the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic, Arkady Ghoukasyan, and asked him
about the fires, about the UN and other matters.
"The fires were provoked by Azerbaijan firing," Mr. Ghoukasyan
said. "They used special bullets that would ignite wheat fields."
In the UN, "the countries of the Islamic Conference are present and
Azerbaijan is hoping to use their support," said Mr. Ghoukasyan. He
added that most countries in the UN know little of the Karabakh
conflict, so "Azerbaijan can try propaganda in the United Nations,"
in a way that it can’t with the OSCE "experts."
By contrast, the situation in Abkhazia is routinely put on the UN
Security Council agenda by Russia, with representative of Georgia
often excluded from the meetings and resorting to sparsely-attended
press conferences outside, most recently on October 12.
President, flag & correspondent
On Nagorno-Karabakh, UN observers see Turkey backing Azerbaijan, while
the NKR is represented, if one can call it that, by Armenia. The
interview, originally scheduled for a hotel across from UN
Headquarters, was moved six blocks south to the Armenian mission
in a brownstone on 36th Street, to a second-story room with the
Nagorno-Karabakh flag on the table. Through a translator, Mr.
Ghoukasyan argued that no negotiations that do not involve
representatives of Nagorno-Karabakh can solve the problem. "The
prospects are diminishing, without Nagorno-Karabakh involvement,
it’s just impossible to come to a resolution," he said.
Hot Words From Frozen Conflicts
Inner City Press asked Mr. Ghoukasyan to compare Nagorno-Karabakh
to certain other so-called frozen conflicts, two of which are before
the OSCE: Transnistria a/k/a Transdnestr, and South Ossetia, where a
referendum was held on November 12, the results of which no country
in the world recognized.
"We already had our referendum," Mr. Ghoukasyan said, "back in 1991. We
would only hold another one if Azerbaijan and the co-chairs of the
OSCE group agreed in advance to recognize its results."
Mr. Ghoukasyan said he had come to the U.S. less to build
political support or to propose a referendum than to raise funds for
infrastructure projects in Nagorno-Karabakh, mostly from "different
circles of Armenians in the United States." He is on a whirlwind tour:
"Detroit Boston, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and maybe Fresno, we
are still finalizing our West Coast program," he said. A highlight
will be a telethon from Los Angeles on November 23.
Speaking of funds, and of infrastructure, Inner City Press asked
about the impact of the Baku – Tbilisi – Ceyhan (BTC) oil pipeline
on the conflict.
"Azerbaijan is trying to get maximum political dividends from fact of
this pipeline," said Mr. Ghoukasyan. "Since the West is interested in
undisruptible oil, Azerbaijan tries to beef up their price for this
stability. This emboldens Azerbaijan, making it more aggressive and
less willing to come to agreement."
What would an agreement look like?
"In any resolution, we think that Karabakh should have physical land
connection with Armenia," said Mr. Ghoukasyan.
At a press conference about the BTC pipeline earlier this year,
the Azeri Ambassador told Inner City Press that twenty percent of
Azerbaijan’s territory has been occupied by Armenia.
On the disputed numbers of displaced people, Mr. Ghoukasyan quipped,
"I always suspected they are bad in mathematics."
He estimated it, "maximally," to be 13%, and put the number of
displaced Azeris at "only" 650,000, rather than the one million figure
used by Azerbaijan. Mr. Ghoukasyan admonished, "There is information
in books."
And so to the library went Inner City Press. Therein it is recounted
that while "in 1989, the Armenian Supreme Council made Nagorno-Karabakh
a part of Armenia, this decision was effectively annulled by NKR
declaring its independence in 1991. Whether the decision to declare
independence was made cooperatively with Yerevan is not yet known."
The UN’s role is dismissed: "with one exception the UN never
condemned the capture of Lachin, the strategic link between Armenia
and Nagorno-Karabakh. The UN passed Security Council Resolutions 822,
853, 874 and 884… Each UN resolution reiterated the international
body’s support for the OSCE Minsk Group process."
Going back, some pundits blame the conflict on Stalin: "he took a part
of Armenia and gave it to Azerbaijan, and now so many people are dying
while trying to correct his foolish mistake. Now redefining the borders
is as painful as cutting someone’s flesh when that person is alive."
Fast forward to 1977, when the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast’s
first secretary from 1973 to 1988, Boris Kevorkov, told visiting
journalists that Karabakh Armenians were happily separated from the
Armenian republic, saying that "the history of Nagorny (Mountainous)
Karabakh is closely interwoven with Azerbaijan’s… By contrast,
the region is close to Armenia geographically but is separated by
high mountains, which were an insuperable barrier in the past for any
extensive contacts." (Quoted in Claire Mouradian’s "The Mountainouse
Karabagh Question").
Also found are rebuttals, including from Azeri poet Bakhtiyar Vahadzade
in his 1988 Open Letter, that "since 1828, our people have been
divided into two parts," and that both Azeris and Karabakh Armenians
"emanate from the same ethnic stock: the Caucasian Albanians." Others
say Turkey always takes the Azeri side. There are references to the
shoot-down of an Iranian C-130 aircraft in 1994 as it crossed the
Azeri-Karabakh line on contact, and of Iran’s demand for an apology.
Going back, a volume by Mazda Publishers in Costa Mesa, California
entitled "Two Chronicles on The History of Karabakh," contains
the full texts of Tarikh-e Karabakh (History of Karabakh) by Mirza
Jamal Javanshir and of Karabakh-name by Mariza Adigozal Beg. In the
introduction, translator-from-Persian George A. Bournoutian reports
that "Armenian historians maintain that all of Karabakh was, at one
time, part of the Armenian kingdom and that the disputed region of
Nagorno-Karabakh has had an Armenian majority for several hundred
years. Azeri historians assert that the region was never part of
Armenia and that the Armenian population arrived there from Persia
and the Ottoman empire after the Treaty of Turkmenchay (1828) when,
thanks to the Russian policy that favored Christians over Muslims, the
Armenians established a majority in what became Nagorno-Karabakh." In
a footnote he addresses nomenclature: "Nagorno-Karabakh is the Russian
designation. The Armenians call is [sic] Artsakh or Gharabagh and
the Azeris Karabag."
Finally, on the question of numbers, Arif Yunosov in "The Migration
Situation in CIS Countries" opines that the conflict has caused
353,000 Armenia refugees and 750,000 Azeris — less than the one
million figure used by Azeri President Aliev, but large, and 100,000
larger than acknowledged in the interview. And a more solid figure than
Aliev’s 20%, but more than was acknowledged, is 13.62 percent. The
search for truth continues. If the comparison is to the original,
Soviet-defined Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast, it must be noted
that NKR is claiming, beyond the Oblast, the territory of Shahumian.
By the end of the interview, Mr. Ghoukasyan was focusing on two
regions of the old Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast over which now
Azerbaijan has de facto control: Martakert and Martuni.
While Mr. Ghoukasyan’s point was that these should be subtracted from
the 13 percent, they raise a larger question, that of break-aways
from break-aways.
The analogy, to Inner City Press, is to the serially-opening or
"nesting" Russian dolls. Inside one republic is another, but inside
the breakaway is another smaller portion, that either wants to remain
with the larger, or to itself be independent.
Northern Kosovo comes to mind, and the portion of Abkhazia into which
a Tbilisi-based government is trying to relocate.
How small can these Russian dolls become? And how will the UN-debated
status of Kosovo, now frozen into 2007, impact or defrost other frozen
conflicts? Developing.
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