ArmInfo. An opportunity has opened to reset deadlocked talks between Baku and Yerevan over the breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh. The parties are a long way apart, but negotiations could help prevent a new escalation after years of growing militarisation and lay the groundwork for the conflict's eventual resolution. The authors of report ''Digging out of Deadlock in Nagorno Karabakh'' prepared by International Crisis Group (ICG) came to such a conclusion.
The window may close if Baku and Yerevan do not act. Already the thaw in Armenia-Azerbaijan relations shows signs of frost, the authors of the report think. Without talks on key issues - the future of areas adjacent to Nagorno- Karabakh and people currently residing there, prospects for international peacekeeping, and Nagorno-Karabakh's status - positions risk hardening further.?
The authors of the report believe that on the adjacent territories, temporarily freezing new settlement construction in return for Azerbaijan refraining from legal action or new sanctions could improve prospects for talks. '' Yerevan argues that decisions regarding settlement expansion are in Stepanakert's hands. In reality, however, Armenia has considerable influence as Nagorno- Karabakh's main security guarantor, provider of around half of its budget and main market for its products. For its part, Baku is likely to oppose such reciprocal steps, fearing that pausing legal action in return for a settlement freeze would risk appearing to accept existing settlements at a time when it feels there is greater international support for its stance.
The second issue revolves around the composition and mandate of a potential international peacekeeping or monitoring mission. Such a mission could help minimise violence, create conditions for a peace deal and monitor or enforce such a deal if and when one is reached. While proposals have been circulated intermittently since 1994, particularly by Russia, no such force has ever deployed. The parties have both tended to oppose a military force or one with an outsized Russian role. An OSCE HLPG was set up in the 1990s to plan for such missions but - in the absence of progress in talks - has foundered. With the support of the parties, the OSCE could reinvigorate it and task it with a specific, time-delimited (perhaps one year) mandate to define a set of options. These could then form the basis for the parties' discussions on such a mission. The last issue is Nagorno-Karabakh's independence claim, at the conflict's core and the hardest to resolve. Armenia and Stepanakert insist on statehood. Baku is at most prepared to offer Nagorno- Karabakh self-rule within Azerbaijan. Though the parties share little common ground, there are tentative signs of movement. In Azerbaijan, senior officials have begun exploring precisely what granting the region autonomy would entail and how a referendum on its status could be organised. Their ideas remain far from anything Yerevan or Stepanakert would accept; nor do they reflect an accurate grasp of life and governance in Nagorno-Karabakh today. They could, however, offer an opening for discussion. Given the sensitivity of the issue and the distance between the parties, any talks on status would likely have to start discreetly and semi- formally, the experts note.
The experts consider that direct talks between the parties inevitably entail risks. They could highlight the distance between the two sides' positions, thereby fuelling mutual anger and potentially reversing the past months' gains. But years of continued stalemate have put a potential solution further out of reach and isolated Armenians and Azerbaijanis from one another. The more time goes by, the more facts on the ground will be entrenched, the harder they will be to reverse and the graver the risk of war. If talks might make matters worse, their continued absence almost certainly will. Getting back to the table will be difficult but is the only way Armenia and Azerbaijan can start digging out of their deadlock.
In the last eighteen months, however, Armenian and Azerbaijani leaders have taken steps to reverse what had seemed a slide toward a new war. Direct leadership contactsand communication channels between security personnel and political representatives in capitals have minimised flare-ups and casualties. Both countries' leaders also agreed to launch humanitarian projects and support visits of relatives of detainees held in each other's capitals as well as of journalists, the first of which occurred in November.This slight thaw marks a substantial shift. It is the first reversal in what had been a steady decline in relations since the April 2016 clashes.
Meanwhile, official Baku had already reacted to the ICG report yesterday. "Azerbaijan welcomes the International Crisis Group (ICG) for keeping on the agenda important issues related to the settlement of the Armenian-Azerbaijani Nagorno-Karabakh conflict," said the official representative of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Azerbaijan Leyla Abdulayeva. She noted that <the ICG's latest report did not address any new issues; the document only pays attention to important topics that Azerbaijan has already raised for many years>. Abdulaeva commented on the report, while remaining true to the official position of the Azerbaijani leadership on all three points: <occupation>, <risk assessment> and <status already determined in the framework of the national legislation of Azerbaijan>. Abdulaeva in fact also said nothing new.
Headquartered in Brussels, the International Crisis Group (ICG) is an independent, non-profit, multinational organization that brings together about 80 employees on five continents. The organization analyzes the situation on the ground and actively advocates for the prevention and containment of deadly conflicts. Based on the information and assessments made on the ground, the ICG publishes analytical reports that provide practical recommendations addressed to key international political decision-makers.