Karabakh: Peace Deal Doubts

Following the recent unsuccessful peace talks on the Nagorny Karabakh dispute in Paris, the Karabakh Armenians are demanding a greater say in the peace process that will decide their future.



Having kept quiet on the eve of the talks, the leadership of the territory is insisting that the Karabakh Armenians must now be allowed to negotiate directly with the government in Baku.



“When Azerbaijan negotiates with Armenia and rejects dialogue with Nagorny Karabakh it is clear that they have one goal - to portray Armenia as an aggressor,” Arkady Gukasian, president of Karabakh told journalists. “I regard that as propaganda. As soon as Azerbaijan begins negotiations with Nagorny Karabakh it will become obvious that Baku is moving away from propaganda.”



Gukasian said that he supported the peace negotiations chaired by the American, French and Russia mediators of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe but they should not be a substitute for “direct talks between the parties of the conflict” – which he says are Nagorny Karabakh and Azerbaijan.



The Karabakh Armenians are currently excluded from the peace talks. Baku refuses to talk directly to them, saying that Armenia has annexed the territory of Azerbaijan and it will only negotiate with the government in Yerevan. The Karabakh Armenians says they are in a direct confrontation with Azerbaijan.



Nagorny Karabakh proclaimed itself an independent state in 1991, but is not recognised by the international community and is linked to the outside world via Armenia.



On this issue, there is a unified position in Karabakh. Parliamentary deputy and former general Vitaly Balasanian said, “It is illogical to keep silent when your own fate is being decided.” Gegam Bagdasarian, a member of the opposition parliamentary faction ARF Dashnaktsutiun-Movement-88, said, “We ought not to have allowed the problem to move onto the Armenia-Azerbaijan plane.”



High hopes were placed on the peace talks in Rambouillet outside Paris last month but they ended without result and with mutual recriminations. The mediators met again in Washington this week and US officials are expected to visit Azerbaijan next week to explore new ideas.



Since the talks failed, top officials in Azerbaijan, including the minister of defence, have said that if the peace process fails Baku reserves the right to go back to war to re-conquer Karabakh.



The Karabakh military leadership said that they were ready to respond to this.



“Naturally we are concerned by the militaristic declarations coming from Baku,” said defence minister Seiran Ohanian. “However in terms of our equipment and modernisation our army is no worse than the Azerbaijani one and as head of the military I declare that we are ready to fight for every inch of our land. In case of necessity, our army is ready to organise defence, to counter-attack and make preventative strikes.”



At Rambouillet the Armenian and Azerbaijani presidents, Robert Kocharian and Ilham Aliev, discussed a peace plan which reportedly involves the phased withdrawal of Armenian forces from seven territories around Nagorny Karabakh, the introduction of peacekeepers and a referendum to be held at a future date on the status of Karabakh.



The issue of status, which has been at the heart of the dispute since it began in 1988, again appears to be the biggest stumbling block.



Karabakh’s foreign minister Giorgy Petrosian told IWPR, “Any status lower than independence is unacceptable for us. The participation of the Karabakh side in negotiations is important and necessary, as there is a series of questions which cannot be decided without Nagorny Karabakh.”



Despite their closeness to Armenia, the Karabakh Armenians are also setting out a distinct position on a series of key issues under discussion in the negotiations.



Rudolf Hairapetian, chairman of the parliamentary commission on state legal issues, told IWPR that holding a referendum was “a waste of time and money” because Karabakh had held one in 1991 and voted to secede from Azerbaijan.



“In the 14 years which have passed since we proclaimed independence, no processes have occurred which suggest that public opinion has changed by a single iota. Any person on our streets can confirm that,” he said.



The Karabakhis also have worries about the prospect of withdrawal of forces from the regions of Kelbajar and Lachin that lie immediately between Nagorny Karabakh and Armenia.



“All our rivers that feed the population of Nagorny Karabakh begin in Kelbajar,” said political analyst David Babayan. “If it is returned to the control of Baku it will be easy to carry out an act of biochemical sabotage to poison the rivers. It is absolutely impossible to return the Lachin region, as it is our means of contact with the outside world.”



They also want to raise the issue of the Shaumian region which they regard as being part of Nagorny Karabakh but all of whose Armenian population was driven out by the Azerbaijani offensive of 1992.



Following the meeting in Rambouillet, several round tables were held in Nagorny Karabakh to discuss the implications of the meeting.



Human rights activist Karen Ohanjanian argued for greater democratisation, saying, “The international community is ready within the framework of international law to recognise self-proclaimed republics if they meet sufficient requirements.”



“We need to bring public opinion to the attention of the negotiators and always remember the price that Nagorny Karabakh paid for victory in the war,” said Galina Arustamian, chairwoman of the Union of Relatives of Dead Warriors.



IWPR asked 20 Karabakh residents for their views on the peace process. All were firmly of the view that Nagorny Karabakh should be given a direct role in the negotiations.



“Diplomats ought to find the correct way to solve the problem by means of organising high-level meetings in Baku and Stepanakert and also between figures from the worlds of art and culture, historians, writers, workers, representatives of all levels of society in Azerbaijan and Nagorny Karabakh,” said Arto Saakian, whose son died in the war of 1991-94.



“It won’t be possible to achieve any positive result at top-level Armenia-Azerbaijan meetings until Azerbaijan sits down at the negotiating table with Nagorny Karabakh.”



Most respondents agreed that Azerbaijani refugees ought to be allowed to return when a political settlement was reached. However, several of those questioned in the town of Shushi (which formerly had a majority Azerbaijani population and is known by Azerbaijanis as Shusha) were categorically against this.



“The return of Azerbaijanis conceals the threat of a resumption of war in a few decades, as sooner or later they will begin to present their claims to the land and ‘stab us in the back’,” said Sanasar, an elderly resident.



On the key issue of the status of Karabakh itself, most of those questioned said they favoured the return of territories from their control to that of Azerbaijan only in exchange for a guarantee of the independence of Nagorny Karabakh.



Ashot Beglarian is a freelance journalist in Stepanakert, Nagorny Karabakh. The terminology used in the edited version of this article differs from that used by the author.