Is peace again within reach?

By Azernews

By Orkhan Amashov

Moscow would bristle at this suggestion, but it seems that Azerbaijan and Armenia, disillusioned over the insipid vacuity of the 31 October Sochi meeting and unconvinced with the Kremlin’s soft-soaping, may now be close to a breakthrough agreement ushering in a qualitatively new phase of interaction between the two states.

This is a mere possibility and there may be nothing in it. But it is all out in the open. The Armenian Hraparak newspaper, known for its anti-governmental leanings and regular revelations visibly aimed at embarrassing Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan over his “softness” vis-à-vis Azerbaijan, has recently published an article claiming that the parties are likely to gather in Tbilisi in late November or early December, and conclude a deal which will amount to the full and irreversible renunciation of all Armenian pretensions over Karabakh.

Whether this suggestion, which might have even sprouted out of an ulterior motive of the Armenian newspaper, is true or not, one aspect seems to be beyond doubt. Although the Sochi meeting did not achieve any tangible progress, it has revealed that, in light of the Russian drive to delay the consummation of a final comprehensive deal, both sides may consider a venue beyond the controlling influence of Moscow to envisage a shared future.

There are some reservations. Firstly, the Kremlin-mediated format is not divorced from Brussels’ mediatory efforts: the two platforms may not be organically intertwined, but they are interconnected by virtue of having exactly the same agenda. It follows that a development under the aegis of one format could be evolved as the subset of another. For instance, the 3 November meeting of the Deputy Prime Ministers of Azerbaijan and Yerevan in Brussels is not devolved from what took place in Sochi on 31 October.

Secondly, Armenia has not yet officially become resigned to the idea that Karabakh is Azerbaijan’s internal matter. In this sense, a Moscow-perpetuated constructive ambiguity which mandates against having any say on the subject for now is not something to which Yerevan is averse. The construct seems to be that the parties engage in issues exclusively falling under the rubric of interstate relations.

The absence of the Karabakh theme, for Azerbaijan, means the issue is no longer relevant, as it was resolved in its favour two years ago. For Armenia, however, this denotes quite a different meaning, for today’s priorities are about the delimitation and demarcation of the state border and the reopening of communications, with Karabakh’s future hanging in the air.

Nevertheless, there are constraints curbing the malleability of this constructive ambiguity. There is a growing sensibility in Armenia that a peace process cannot be a moving target, running from the point of infinite possibilities to an abstract destination. Whilst addressing his own party members on 29 October, Pashinyan mournfully reiterated the obvious: “Unfortunately, the international community, that is all countries without exception, consider Karabakh as part of Azerbaijan, and this is seen in all documents”.

What the Armenian PM meant was that if the Karabakh issue were to be addressed at this stage of the negotiations, Yerevan would be compelled to acquiesce with Baku’s principal view. In this context, Pashinyan’s indirect hint could be construed as indicating the inevitable necessity of unequivocal Armenian recognition of Azerbaijani sovereignty over the region that Yerevan has hitherto resolutely viewed as out of contention.

Both the Prague and Sochi meetings concluded with a formulation on the mutual recognition of territorial integrity and sovereignty in accordance with the UN Charter and the 1991 Alma-Ata Declaration. The parties could still disagree on the interpretation of this clause. For Yerevan, the reference to these documents is of importance in terms of the delimitation and demarcation of the state border. For Baku, it is a vehicle to reaffirm Karabakh’s rightful ownership by Azerbaijan.

Russia’s role is of paramount importance. It is presently in the position of functionalising its peacekeepers temporarily stationed in Khankandi as an effective weapon of leverage vis-a-vis both sides. Its message to Azerbaijan is that, so long as Baku has not reached a final deal with Yerevan, it would be neither judicious nor practicable for it to withdraw from the region. Russia also wants Armenia to embrace the view that its peacekeepers are the only reliable guarantor of the security of the region’s Armenian population, and, therefore, de facto Azerbaijani control of the remainder of Karabakh is currently unthinkable.

On a different note, for Armenia, a fear of doing something that is contrary to what the Kremlin considers judicious is no longer as tormenting as was previously the case. What is probably preying on Pashinyan’s mind is how he can agree on a formula with Baku which will both firmly recognise Karabakh as under Azerbaijani sovereignty, yet not put an end to the superficial possibility of a special design for the security and rights of the ethnic Armenians inhabiting the region.

Once the liminal line is crossed and a principal understanding on the reintegration of what is presently under the control of the Russian peacekeepers into the remainder of Azerbaijan is achieved, all the thorny issues of multi-tracked interstate normalisation will appear less daunting.