New PACE subcommittee to study Nagorno Karabakh conflict

PACE has set up a new subcommittee to study the Nagorno Karabakh and other frozen and live conflicts.

The chairman of the subcommittee, British MP David Wilshire has told ArmInfo's correspondent that the subcommittee was set up in response to one of the preliminary conclusions reached when thinking about lessons that could be learned from the Russia-Georgia war. This preliminary conclusion was that warning signs and comments by Russians and Georgians were not taken as seriously as they could have
been over a considerable period of time by Member States of the Council of Europe.

The subcommittee has two tasks:

- Organise a conference for all those invited in monitoring and /or assisting with issues that might lead to an outbreak of violence between countries. The aims for the conference will be to learn about what is currently being done by various organisations (such as the UN, OSCE, NATO, CIS, CofE, EU, etc) explore whether working together is a possibility and discuss how we might all do more to prevent
further wars in Europe.

- Encourage and help organise ongoing monitoring and assisting.

Working to resolve 'frozen conflicts' and/or become involved in the consequences of a 'live conflict' are not part of the subcommittee's terms of reference.

However, it will clearly need to study and understand existing (and past) frozen and live conflicts. This will, of course, include Nagorno Karabakh. If the work of the subcommittee is successful it would seek to play a part in drawing the attention of Member States to the risk of this 'frozen conflict' being in danger of thawing out and becoming a new war - so that steps could be taken to alert Member States and thus help prevent an outbreak of fighting.

/ArmInfo/