Karabakh foreign minister voices the only possible format for settlement of Karabakh conflict

YEREVAN, February 19. /ARKA/. Speaking at an annual news conference on February 19, Nagorno-Karabakh foreign minister Masis Mayilian said full-fledged negotiations on the settlement of the Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh) conflict provide for the involvement of three parties – Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh), Azerbaijan, and Armenia, which signed the cease-fire agreement in May 1994. 

In his words, it is this format that is enshrined in the final document of the CSCE / OSCE Budapest Summit. ‘Accordingly, we believe that efforts should be exerted to resume the trilateral Artsakh-Azerbaijan-Armenia negotiations, and not to create a new negotiation architecture,’ he said.

‘It should also be noted that the lack of full-format negotiations is a derivative of Azerbaijani leadership’s lack of political will to achieve a final settlement of the conflict. By impeding the resumption of the full-format negotiations with the direct and full-fledged participation of Artsakh, refusing to implement the peacemaking initiatives to strengthen the ceasefire, and pursuing a consistent policy of escalating the conflict, Azerbaijan deliberately protracts the establishment of lasting peace in the region,’ he said.

He said in this regard, it is worth recalling that the full-format negotiations were undermined in due time as a result of similar manipulations by the Azerbaijani party, which, at the peak of the development of the Great Political Agreement, insisted on the elaboration of settlement principles as a basis for continuing the negotiations. 

‘Now Azerbaijan proposes to abandon the discussion of the principles of the conflict settlement, which it initiated, and to start some kind of structured negotiations. Such inconsistency of the Azerbaijani authorities raises no doubts that this initiative, like the previous ones, is just a trick, resulting from their unwillingness to recognize the right to self-determination realized by the people of Artsakh as a basis for achieving a final settlement of the conflict between Azerbaijan and Karabakh,’ he said.

’The Republic of Artsakh has always supported the initiatives aimed at strengthening the ceasefire regime, and has repeatedly made various proposals to reduce tensions on the Line of Contact between the armed forces of Artsakh and Azerbaijan. In doing so, we always took into account that these steps should not be formal or declarative, but should make a real contribution to the stabilization of the situation on the Line of Contact. The same approach applies equally to the proposal on expanding the Office of the Personal Representative of the OSCE Chairperson-in-Office, which should not be limited to a formal increase in the number of staff, but should provide for increased monitoring capabilities of the Office,’ he said.

He added that the implementation of this proposal will be an important step in the right direction. However, merely the expansion of the staff of the Office of the Personal Representative of the OSCE Chairperson-in-Office and its increased monitoring capabilities are not sufficient to ensure stability and predictability on the Line of Contact between the armed forces of Artsakh and Azerbaijan. 

It is also necessary to implement other initiatives on strengthening the ceasefire, in particular, the proposal on mechanism of investigation incidents agreed upon in 2011. In this context, the practical application of the agreement of February 6, 1995, reached by Azerbaijan, Artsakh and Armenia under the aegis of the OSCE, is also of great importance. The agreement contains a whole complex of militarily significant measures on stabilization of crisis situations. 

The Nagorno-Karabakh conflict erupted into armed clashes after the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s as the predominantly Armenian-populated enclave of Azerbaijan sought to secede from Azerbaijan and declared its independence backed by a successful referendum. 

On May 12, 1994, the Bishkek cease-fire agreement put an end to the military operations. A truce was brokered by Russia in 1994, although no permanent peace agreement has been signed. Since then, Nagorno-Karabakh and several adjacent regions have been under the control of Armenian forces of Karabakh. 

Nagorno-Karabakh is the longest-running post-Soviet era conflict and has continued to simmer despite the relative peace of the past two decades, with snipers causing tens of deaths a year. On April 2, 2016, Azerbaijan launched military assaults along the entire perimeter of its contact line with Nagorno-Karabakh. Four days later a cease-fire was reached. -0-