[53] SOUTH KOREA DELAYS SENDING TROOPS TO IRAQ

End Note

[54] NAGORNO-KARABAKH PEACE IS AS ELUSIVE AS 10 YEARS AGO

The everlasting conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh reached a symbolic milestone this week with the 10th anniversary of a Russian-brokered cease-fire agreement that ended nearly three years of fierce fighting between Armenian and Azerbaijani forces. A bitter war that killed (according to different estimates) between 20,000 and 35,000 people and displaced hundreds of thousands of others.

Ten years might seem a long enough period to heal the wounds and lay the groundwork for a political agreement that would resolve the most intractable ethnic acrimony in the former Soviet Union once and for all. Indeed, time has soothed nationalist tempers on both sides of the Armenian-Azerbaijani front line. However, the scars left by the conflict are now as deep as they were a decade ago, making a mutually acceptable compromise deal all but impossible. The parties remain far apart on key contentious issues, with Azerbaijan insisting on Nagorno-Karabakh's return under its rule and the Armenians refusing to consider that.

The fact that the truce has largely held (despite periodical deadly skirmishes along the border between Armenia and Azerbaijan and the frontline north and east of Karabakh) without any international peacekeeping is quite remarkable in itself. Few people expected it to last for so long when the defense ministers of Armenia and Azerbaijan as well as the commander of the unrecognized Nagorno-Karabakh Republic's (NKR) army signed the cease-fire agreement in Moscow on 12 May 1994. The agreement took effect on 17 May.

With tens of thousands of heavily armed troops still facing off through the fortified line of contact, the war can theoretically resume at any moment. But that seems unlikely as neither party would benefit from renewed fighting at this juncture. The truce left the Armenians in control of Karabakh and seven districts in Azerbaijan proper that surround the Armenian-populated disputed region. They hardly need any further territorial gains. Azerbaijan, for its part, is still widely seen as lacking the military might to win back the lost territories by force despite regular bellicose statements by its leaders. Most analysts believe that Baku will be unable to embark on a massive military buildup before converting much of its oil reserves into cash. That should take at least several more years.

The nearest the parties came to cutting a deal was in March-April 2001 when Armenian President Robert Kocharian and his then-Azerbaijani counterpart Heidar Aliyev held a series of peace talks in Paris and on the Florida island of Key West. The talks were sponsored by France, Russia, and the United States, which jointly co-chair the so-called Minsk Group of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), the international mediating body. According to Armenian and Western sources, the two leaders finalized a framework agreement that would recognize Karabakh as part of Armenia in exchange for an Armenian withdrawal from all but one of the occupied Azerbaijani districts and the opening of a transport corridor between Azerbaijan and its Nakhichevan exclave.

However, the peace accord was never signed. The Armenians subsequently accused Aliyev of backtracking on his promises, a charge denied by the late Azerbaijani president and his son and successor Ilham. Baku insists that no far-reaching understandings were reached at Key West.

But as the former chief U.S. negotiator on Karabakh, Rudolf Perina, admitted in 2002, the two sides were "incredibly close" to a deal. U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage said during a recent visit to Yerevan that "President Heidar Aliyev was actually moving forward quite well but I think had great difficulty selling this proposal back home."

Conventional wisdom suggests that Ilham Aliyev, who lacks his father's charisma and iron grasp on power, is even more unlikely to embrace the Key West formula. Kocharian is said to have told a group of prominent members of the Armenian diaspora last week not to expect a breakthrough in the peace process this year.

Azerbaijan stands for the so-called step-by-step settlement that envisages an Armenian withdrawal from the occupied Azerbaijani lands in return for the restoration of economic links between the two states. It would also indefinitely delay agreement on the status of Nagorno-Karabakh. The idea has been repeatedly rejected as too risky by Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh. Nonetheless, Azerbaijani officials say they are currently discussing it with their Armenian counterparts. The latter have not explicitly denied the claims.

In a 19 April speech in Washington, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Europe Elizabeth Jones complained that the two sides "have made no effort to prepare their populations for the politically difficult compromises necessary to effect a genuine peace agreement." Yet, what most ordinary Armenians and Azerbaijanis think about each other now has never been properly gauged. Neither country has a democratically elected government or credible opinion polls.

Besides, free expression of Nagorno-Karabakh-related opinions in both Armenia and Azerbaijan is seriously hampered by rigid boundaries of political correctness set by the respective political and intellectual elites. Anyone advocating serious concessions to the opposite side thus risks being branded a traitor. Western-sponsored contacts in recent years between Armenian and Azerbaijani politicians, journalists, and nongovernmental organizations have been largely unproductive because they have targeted the most active segments of the populations that seem least prepared for dialogue.

Paradoxically, the international mediators have themselves helped to quash public debate on the problem with their deeply secretive work style. The Karabakh peace process is arguably the least transparent in the world, with Minsk Group proposals publicized years after being submitted to the feuding governments and rejected by one of them. This might in turn explain the West's leniency toward gross human rights violations and chronic vote rigging in Armenia and Azerbaijan that apparently derives from an assumption that an internationally ostracized regime in either country will be unwilling or unable to compromise on Nagorno-Karabakh.

Yet, the example of Armenia's former President Levon Ter-Petrossian, who was forced to resign in February 1998 for advocating a Minsk Group plan 16 months after his reputedly fraudulent re-election, shows that international legitimacy is no substitute for a popular mandate to make fateful decisions. For all their disregard of public opinion, the authorities in Baku and Yerevan view a compromise solution as a potentially destabilizing factor that could be easily exploited by their domestic opponents. Putting their power at risk for the sake of a Karabakh settlement is therefore hardly something for which they are prepared. This reality leaves scant hope for the removal of the greatest obstacle to peace and stability in the South Caucasus in the near future.Emil Danielyan is an RFE/RL correspondent.

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