Co-Chair vote against UN resolution on Karabakh conflict imperils negotiations process

The vote by the three Minsk Group co-chairs against the resolution has strengthened Azerbaijan’s skepticism about the Minsk Group format itself, and has in that sense muddled prospects for the negotiations.

BACKGROUND: When on March 14 the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution on the situation on the occupied territories of Azerbaijan, the United Nations added another document calling for the withdrawal of Armenian troops and reaffirming the world organization’s support for Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity. This particular document was also adopted just two months prior to of the fifteenth anniversary of the passing of the first UN Security Council resolution in April 1993, which, ironically, called for an “immediate” withdrawal following the occupation of the Kelbajar region of Azerbaijan. In the intervening years, both the Security Council and the General Assembly have passed several other resolutions on the subject.

While the 15 years passed after the adoption of the first resolution go a long way to demonstrate just how committed the Security Council is to enforcing its own resolutions, the debate and voting at the General Assembly this time around revealed some interesting details. With 39 votes for and 7 against, the resolution clearly reflects Azerbaijan’s growing international profile. Among other, the resolution was widely supported by the members of the Organization of the Islamic Conference and members of GUAM – Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine. At the same time, the vote against the resolution on the part of France, the United States and Russia - the three main mediators in the conflict who are the co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group – put them squarely on Armenia’s side, along with one of its surprising companions, Vanuatu. The decision of the co-chairs to side with one of the parties to the conflict rather than abstaining, as most other European states did, has raised substantial doubt regarding the impartiality of the Minsk Group Co-chairs in Azerbaijan and elsewhere. By now, public opinion in Azerbaijan is so negative about the three co-chair nations that this self-inflicted damage may take them much longer to repair than, perhaps, initially envisioned. Indeed, this vote may carry more long-term consequences for the conflict resolution process than visible at first sight.

By trying to reassert their own, somewhat self-important, monopoly over the mediation process between Armenia and Azerbaijan, France, Russia and the United States have to Azerbaijanis only confirmed the wide-spread perception of bias on their behalf that was already growing before the resolution was passed. As a result, the co-chairs may have weakened their ability to function as effective disinterested brokers.

Of course, the silver lining is that the mediators, who have often disagreed on most important issues, produced a consensus even if that meant opposing a UN resolution based on the same fundamentals of international law they regularly defend; and although it meant siding with one party in the conflict that they are tasked to mediate. This is not the first time that mediators are more concerned with themselves than the problem they are tasked to resolve. As often happens with protracted conflicts, some things develop into a routine, be it the non-implementation of international documents or co-chairs too involved in their internal consensus-building.

There are considerable indications that the United States was inclined to abstain from voting, while the other co-chairs were adamant in their determination to vote against. Washington may have desired to maintain a semblance of neutrality, but as this inclination was not followed through, the matter is no of mainly academic interest.

IMPLICATIONS: For Azerbaijan, the vote against the resolution by the co-chairs came in the wake of Kosovo’s unilateral declaration of independence. The co-chair countries missed an excellent chance to dispel doubts about the Kosovo precedent. By adopting the resolution, the General Assembly exposed some rather confused approaches and ambiguous perceptions of international law in Moscow, Paris and Washington. This seeming confusion between the mediators’ stated support of basic principles of international law and, at the same time, reluctance to vote in order to uphold them, was in fact highlighted in a speech by the Turkish representative at the debate.

Azerbaijan’s, and for that matter Georgia’s, sensitivities regarding their territorial integrity should not be underestimated. Evidently, more than any other issue, the attitude towards the nation’s territorial integrity is the key element shaping strategic perceptions in Baku. A related general concern is the role that the international peace-keeping force, incidentally including both an Azerbaijani and a Georgian contingent, played in facilitating Kosovo’s separation from Serbia, in spite of the early promises to respect Serbia’s territorial integrity.

Given the experience with the Russian peacekeepers in Georgia and, most recently, with the NATO-led force in the Balkans, the co-chairs’ decision to side with Armenia at the General Assembly is likely to make Azerbaijan more suspicious of accepting an international peacekeeping presence as an element of a potential agreement. Overall, it is clear that the lessons to be learned in Eurasia from the Kosovo case deserve a more serious discussion than has so far been forthcoming. So far, it seems, Azerbaijan’s and Georgia’s Western partners have neither been willing or prepared to enter into a meaningful dialogue regarding the impact of the Kosovo developments.

Moreover, the co-chairs voted against the resolution just as they had been showing remarkable reluctance to criticize Armenian authorities for using unprecedented levels of violence against protesters during the post-election confrontation in Yerevan. This relaxed attitude towards events in Armenia stands in sharp contrast to the harsh Western criticism of the earlier and less confrontational internal troubles in both Azerbaijan and Georgia. Armenia’s political crisis affected Azerbaijan as well, when the most significant armed confrontation in years occurred along the line of contact just as the political crisis was unfolding in the streets of Yerevan.

All this bodes well neither for the mediators’ overall credibility, nor for the prospects of reaching a peaceful solution to the conflict. Armenia’s reaction to the resolution illustrates this. During the debate at the United Nations, the Armenian representative called the UN General Assembly resolution a “sheet of paper,” a stance that may be influenced by the mediators’ condoning of Armenia’s long-standing occupation of the Azerbaijani territories. An Armenian government spokesman in Yerevan described only those not voting in favor of the resolution as “civilized nations.” This list, of course, included a significant number of UN member-states, including two of Armenia’s neighbors – Georgia and Turkey.

CONCLUSIONS: In the aftermath of the General Assembly vote, voices in Baku calling for dissolution of the Minsk Group have become much louder and more numerous. Not surprisingly, these sentiments are now echoed by some official figures as well. Speaking in Baku, representatives of both Russia and the United States said that the UN resolutions are not really effective in resolving conflicts. While it is hard to disagree with them, none addressed the question whether these two permanent members of the Security Council bear part of the responsibility for this state of affairs.

Emin Alisayidov is a Baku-based freelance writer.
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