The OSCE mediators brokering a settlement of the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict over Upper Garabagh expect a breakthrough in peace talks that have been underway for 10 years without any tangible results. They have said parties to the conflict may reach accord in 2006.
In a joint statement passed at the end of their visit to Baku on Friday, the co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group (MG) voiced confidence that the ongoing talks within the ‘Prague process’ are moving forward and will produce positive results next year. However, solution to numerous outstanding issues will depend on the conflicting sides, the statement said. “We hope the sides will sign an agreement next year.
I said in July that peace may come within a year but may also take centuries. But progress achieved in the talks gives hope that next year will yield real results,” the US co-chair Steven Mann told a news conference. “We have never before stated around the year-end that next year may see signing of a peace accord. You should be able to read between the lines. On the eve of 2005, we voiced a hope for progress in the negotiations and now we can say it has been achieved. We do not rule out that an agreement will be reached in 2006,” Russian mediator Yuri Merzlyakov said. Merzlyakov said the OSCE’s military mission, which visited Baku on Thursday, has paid its first visit to the conflict zone since it was set up in 1997. “I am not inclined to raise redundant optimism but the fact that officers developing a peacekeeping mission scenario have appeared in Baku after an 8-year break may provide some food for thought.” The peacekeepers’ duties would range from stationing observers to carrying out large-scale disarmament and demilitarization operations in the entire region. The mediators said a common ground was reached on certain issues within the negotiating process, but declined to elaborate. Mann said the meeting the mediators had with President Ilham Aliyev was useful. He said they agreed during the talks in Baku that another meeting of two presidents should be held in late January-early February. The venue of the talks remains uncertain. An activist of the hard-line Garabagh Liberation Organization (GLO), who intervened by introducing himself as a journalist, accused the mediators of assisting the separatist regime in Garabagh. “If you want the conflict to be settled, why are you providing financial aid to separatists?” Co-chair Mann tried to find a way out of the situation, saying “the inconsiderable assistance we provide to Garabagh is for humanitarian purposes”. Another tough question given to French mediator Bernard Fassier concerned the recent statement by the mayor of the French city of Valence on the recognition of Upper Garabagh as an independent state. The diplomat tried to dodge the question, but eventually had to face it. “France does not recognize the self-proclaimed republic,” he said. Shortly before the press conference, the GLO tried to stage a protest outside the Foreign Ministry while mediators were holding talks, demanding that they immediately stop aiding the aggressor state of Armenia and its separatist regime. However, the police dispersed the protesters, detaining 10 GLO members. The pressure group said the co-chairs’ actions are not in line with their mediating mission. “We will not stand the co-chairs’ pro-Armenian activity. We will do all we can to prevent their visits to the region and achieve suspension of their activity,” it said in a statement. During their visit to the country, the co-chairs met with the president, foreign minister and head of the Azerbaijani community of Upper Garabagh Nizami Bahmanov. Bahmanov said he is optimistic of the prospects for the negotiating process. “The mediators believe the upcoming period will be prospective for both [conflicting] sides,” he told reporters after a meeting with the co-chairs. Bahmanov said next year will be positive for Azerbaijan. “We should draw maximum benefit from 2006 in light of the new [presidential] elections in 2008,” he said and added that the Azeri side once again reaffirmed its intransigent stance to the mediators that it will not accept occupation of its territories. The Azerbaijani community leader emphasized, however, that the mediators voiced concern over frequent statements on the resumption of hostilities. “They believe this would not bring Azerbaijan any benefit,” he said. Bahmanov informed the co-chairs that the Azerbaijani public has ample proof of the destruction of historical monuments in the Armenian-occupied territories. He submitted a video tape to the mediators on a request from U.S. and France co-chairs. The mediators were satisfied with the talks they held in the Armenian capital Yerevan prior to arriving in Azerbaijan. Merzlyakov claimed that the involvement of the self-styled Upper Garabagh republic in the talks is ‘inevitable’. He did not rule out that progress in peace talks next year may lead to the “resumption of fully fledged negotiations”, with Upper Garabagh represented as a party, but said “the issue should be solved not by co-chairs but by the conflicting sides”. French mediator Fassier said a ‘golden opportunity’ has opened up to solve the dispute, as no elections are expected next year. “Elections add extra challenges to the already complex problem,” he said. The US co-chair Mann said the sides adhere to ‘tough positions’ and neither of them has shown a ‘flexible approach’ so far, but noted that both Baku and Yerevan sincerely aspire to a conflict resolution.
Head of the self-proclaimed republic Arkadi Gukasian made a harsh statement after meeting the OSCE mediators. “Upper Garabagh will never be part of Azerbaijan, neither de-jure or de-facto,” the separatist leader told reporters after a one-hour meeting with the MG co-chairs in Yerevan last Wednesday. “Garabagh is an independent state and any talk about it returning to Azerbaijan is abstract and groundless,” he claimed. Gukasian said the Garabagh conflict will not be resolved “in the conditions of confidentiality”. “If we agree on a certain issue, this will be made public. The people, especially in Garabagh, should be able to express their views,” he said and expressed confidence that “Armenian President Robert Kocharian or anyone else will not be able to solve the problem on his own”. The separatist leader said Azerbaijan’s allegedly “aggressive rhetoric” was impeding the conflict settlement, which could “render the entire process pointless”. Gukasian insisted that the talks will not yield any positive results without the participation of the Garabagh regime. “We have many questions not to Armenia but to Azerbaijan, and if the latter wants the conflict to be settled, it should negotiate with the Upper Garabagh republic. I have asked the co-chairs why Azerbaijan has not done this yet.” Gukasian added that the mediators did not make any new proposals at the meeting.
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