Opportunity to resolve Karabakh conflict peacefully showed up this year, says Russian expert

By Azernews

By Rashid Shirinov

The Armenian-Azerbaijani Nagorno-Karabakh conflict that emerged in the South Caucasus in late 1980s has brought too much suffering to the Azerbaijanis living in their lands now occupied by Armenia. When the OSCE Minsk Group joined the peace diplomacy to find a durable and lasting solution to the conflict, there was a bright flash of hope in the eyes of millions of Azerbaijani IDPs and refugees. However, the conflict still remains unresolved.

“For more than twenty years, the OSCE Minsk Group has not actually taken any real action on a real settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict,” Russian political analyst and expert on international issues Evgeny Mikhailov told Azernews on December 11.

He added that until recently, there was an impression that the main task of the mediators is simply to prevent the hot phase of the clashes and preserve the existing status quo, when Armenia occupied the territories, and Azerbaijan, having the opportunity to return them, cannot do this because of certain considerations of political expediency.

“However, in my opinion, 2017 is the year when the situation began to change radically and the opportunity showed up to resolve this problem peacefully,” the expert said. “The pressure of public organizations increased, and reasonable proposals emerged from the countries-guarantors of the conflicting parties.”

Indeed, there was a greater activity in the settlement process this year. Presidents of Azerbaijan and Armenia accompanied by the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs met in mid-October in Geneva, and the countries’ foreign ministers have several times met this year both before and after the presidents’ meeting.

“The emerging sharp rapprochement of the political interests of Turkey and Russia against the opposition to the U.S. pressure in the region is able to resolve the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict in the near future,” said Mikhailov. "The more frequent meetings of the Azerbaijani and Armenian foreign ministers are the links of a new strategy Turkey and Russia deployed throughout the South Caucasus."

He also noted the efforts of Iran and Kazakhstan, which have recently intensified diplomatic activity in an attempt to help resolve the long-standing conflict situation.

Commenting on the recent meeting of the Azerbaijani and Armenian foreign ministers in Vienna, Mikhailov made an assumption that intensive negotiations are under way on the last meetings on the return of at least the occupied Azerbaijani regions in the so-called "buffer zone" of the conflict.

The Nagorno-Karabakh conflict began in 1988 when Armenia made territorial claims against Azerbaijan. As a result of the ensuing war, in 1992 Armenian armed forces occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan, including the Nagorno-Karabakh region and seven surrounding regions. More than 20,000 Azerbaijanis were killed and over 1 million were displaced as a result of the large-scale hostilities. The 1994 ceasefire agreement was followed by peace negotiations.

Until now, Armenia controls fifth part of Azerbaijan’s territory and rejects implementing four UN Security Council resolutions on withdrawal of its armed forces from Nagorno-Karabakh and surrounding districts.