ICG: Parties to Karabakh conflict need to make decisive push for progress in peace talks

/By Azernews/

By Gunay Camal

The April escalation and the acute threat a graver escalation could draw in powerful neighboring countries have focused the much-needed political attention of key international actors and produced an opportunity to find a peaceful solution to a generation-old conflict, often mistakenly called frozen.

International Crisis Group has announced about this in its report on the Armenian-Azerbaijani Nagorno-Karabakh conflict released on July 4.

For over two decades, Azerbaijan and Armenia have been locked in conflict which emerged over Armenia's territorial claims against its South Caucasus neighbor. Since a war in the early 1990s, Armenian armed forces have occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan's territory, including Nagorno-Karabakh and seven surrounding regions.

Over the entire period of its existence, the OSCE Minsk Group, which acted as the only mediator in resolution of the conflict, failed to move forward in resolving the long lasting conflict.

The Group believes it is essential that the parties, urged on by France, Russia and the U.S., as co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group, make a decisive push for progress in peace talks.

Resumed military escalation would likely be far more destructive than the April flare-up. There is a serious risk that long-range ground-to-ground missiles would be used and casualties, particularly civilian,be much higher in the effort to gain a decisive ground advantage, according to the report.

“The regional context has changed profoundly in the last year, increasing the potential for wide fallout if fighting resumes,” the report reads. “Iran is still defining its approach to the region but has flagged an interest in a greater role. Russia and the West remain at odds, with differences in Eastern Europe perhaps even greater than in Syria. Interests do align in pushing for progress on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, but Moscow, which profiles itself as the key mediator and security guarantor, also seeks thereby to strengthen its strategic stake in a region, considering it a sphere of privileged interest, including by forging a closer relationship with Baku.”

The Group is sure that all the Minsk Group co-chairs should engage in the mediation effort at a senior political level in order to lend it the necessary weight and sense of urgency.

“The co-chairs should maintain pressure on the sides to offer concessions, specifically on Armenia to hand over the occupied territory of Azerbaijan, and on Azerbaijan to accept strong, internationally-backed security guarantees and an interim status for the Nagorno-Karabakh,” the report reads.

The EU should continue to give its strong political support to the Minsk Group, including through its bilateral relations with Baku and Yerevan, experts of the Crisis Group say.

“It could make a special contribution, in conjunction with key European Union (EU) member states, particularly Germany – the present OSCE chairman-in-office (CiO) and the EU Minsk Group members – by putting on the table concrete offers of assistance to bolster security and other CSBMs The OSCE High Level Planning Group should step up preparatory work on a future peacekeeping force, including by exploring possible contributions.”