David Stepanyan, Yerevan, exclusively to Vestnik Kavkaza
In December in Dublin the annual meeting of the Foreign Ministers of the OSCE was held, where in addition to a change of the Presidency from Ireland to Ukraine in 2013 and discussion of organizational and technical issues, the OSCE announced the start of the "Helsinki 40" process. The Dublin Ministerial Council became the latest attempt to revive the decaying activity of the OSCE and increase its efficiency. In this context, the start of "Helsinki 40" took place on time. For Armenia and Azerbaijan, as the countries involved in the resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, the Irish Ministerial Council was of great importance.
The only result of the summit concerning the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict was the joint statement of the Heads of Delegation of the OSCE Minsk Group, Sergei Lavrov, Hillary Clinton and Minister for European Affairs Bernard Cazeneuve. The diplomats urged the parties of the conflict "to demonstrate the political will necessary to achieve a peaceful settlement." "The parties should be guided by the Helsinki principles, in particular those concerning the use of force or threat of force, territorial integrity, equality and self-determination of peoples, and the elements set out in the statements of our countries at L'Aquila in 2009 and Muskoka in 2010. Referring to the statement of our presidents made in Deauville in 2011, we again call on the parties to take decisive steps to achieve a peaceful settlement,” the ministers said.
Ukraine will become the second CIS republic after Kazakhstan to preside at the OSCE. Among its priorities Kiev mentioned conflict resolution, undertaking confidence measures in the OSCE area, energy security, and dialogue on the principles of conventional arms control in Europe. Almost all of these issues have a direct or indirect relation to the South Caucasus. However, the question of whether Ukraine and the OSCE have enough resources to promote at least one of these areas remains open. In these circumstances, Armenian and Azerbaijani societies, as well as the OSCE countries, have to be guided by the wisdom - "no bad news is good news." According to the deputy director of the Caucasus Institute, Sergey Minasyan, in the Karabakh conflict a constructive approach can be expected from Ukraine, as the government of Viktor Yanukovych is well aware of the features of the conflicts in the OSCE. However, in Armenia there is another opinion, given the fact that for many years Azerbaijan has been a strategic partner of Ukraine, especially in terms of arms exports. This situation is perceived ambiguously by Yerevan, allowing policy makers and experts to speak about a certain bias in Kiev concerning the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. However, with the arrival of Yanukovych a heavy dose of pragmatism was added to the Caucasian policy of Ukraine. Obviously, this, among other arguments, allowed the President of Armenia Serzh Sargsyan to visit Kiev for the first time after ten-year break.
The logical continuation of the OSCE Ministerial Council of Dublin was a conference dedicated to the OSCE peacekeeping experience in Brussels under the chairmanship of the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ireland and current chair of the OSCE, Eamon Gilmore. The event, organized by the European Policy and Crisis Management Center, looked quite large, considering that it was attended by over a hundred diplomats, EU officials, representatives of NGOs and the media. The conference raised the question of what progress has been registered in the settlement since the date of occurrence of the OSCE Minsk Group. Recall that one of the goals of MG was to prepare the ground for a significant OSCE conference in Minsk in order to bring the conflict to a full and final settlement. Nevertheless, 20 years later no major breakthrough has been achieved. Director of the British NGO LINKS, Dennis Sammut, during his speech focused on the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, calling on the OSCE to start convening the Minsk Conference to develop steps leading to the achievement of a peace agreement on Nagorno-Karabakh.
In general, the British expert’s proposal seems logical, given the numerous failures of the negotiating process to achieve any significant breakthrough in the settlement. Examples of processes of settling other conflicts have shown that the political will of the parties to compromise almost never manifested itself. In this context, some experts from both sides of the conflict even repeatedly called to persuade the negotiating parties to be constructive by carrots and sticks in the hands of the international community. Based on the intransigence of the parties to the conflict in their positions, it can be assumed that this method has not yet been applied by the co-chair countries, which allows to Yerevan and Baku feel quite natural in the format of secret talks.
Replacement of the Minsk process by some other formats and mechanisms will take a long time and will inevitably be used for internal purposes and posturing, not for achieving any real breakthrough in the first place by the parties to the conflict. Thus, the output of the Karabakh settlement outside the Minsk process is likely to become a setback and not to lead to real progress. The OSCE Minsk Group in the Karabakh settlement has no alternative, although the number of participants and the scope of negotiations can be expanded, as well as the method of negotiating. And restarting the Minsk process can become a reality with all the aforementioned components, the first of which will be the convening of the Minsk Conference. All these factors, coupled with the emergence of the political will of the leadership of the countries involved in the conflict, can bring a de facto frozen settlement to the emergence of new ideas in 2013 that will enable this process to achieve a comprehensive settlement of the Karabakh conflict.
