Armenia pessimistic over Karabakh solution to territorial claim

eTaiwan ^ | 2004-11-17 / | Reuters

[yonif]

A top Armenian official said he was losing hope for a solution to the long and bitter territorial dispute with neighboring Azerbaijan which he accused of trying to negotiate through blackmail.

Rival claims have hung over tiny, mountainous Nagorno-Karabakh from the early Soviet era.

An ethnic Armenian region inside Azerbaijan, it was the scene of one of the bloodiest of the ethnic wars that broke out in the ashes of the Soviet Union.

"I'm not very optimistic about this issue," defense Minister Serzh Sarksyan told Reuters in an interview late on Monday. "I do not see anything serious (in negotiations) from our neighbours."

An estimated 35,000 people were killed and some one million refugees fled to Azerbaijan where they remain.

Thousands of ethnic Armenian refugees also fled to Armenia. A truce was agreed in 1994 but there has been little movement to end the dispute, despite international mediation.

Sarksyan said that when the two presidents met earlier this year, both leaders had sounded hopeful about the chances of a peaceful resolution. Then, he said, Azeri President Ilham Aliyev tried to put pressure on Armenia through the United Nations.

"Are they trying to make us calm down and (also) trying to press us through the United Nations? We don't understand it," said Sarksyan, seen as President Robert Kocharyan's closest political ally and his potential successor.

"In this very important issue, both parties must be honest, to make the other side hopeful of a good solution. But if one of the parties is coming to the negotiations hiding his hand behind him with a stone in it, that is not negotiations.

"Today, we just have to find a compromise. The time has long past for making hints. Now is the time for speaking directly," he said.

He added: "From (Armenian) society, there is no great pressure to solve this through compromise. But I think that the issue can only be solved through compromise."

Looking for a compromise

In an October interview with Reuters, Aliyev said time was running out to resolve the issue, one of a handful of so-called frozen conflicts left over from the collapse of the Soviet empire. Aliyev warned that Azerbaijan would not wait forever, nor would it ever give up its claim to the region.

But Sarksyan, himself from Nagorno-Karabakh and who led troops in the conflict, said he saw no signs that conditions were being readied for fighting to start again.

Armenia was prepared to discuss handing back a buffer zone on the border with Azerbaijan, treating the Nagorno-Karabakh issue as a separate issue if three key principles are held to.

Those are that Nagorno-Karabakh never be subordinated to Azerbaijan, that it would not remain an enclave and that it would get guarantees of security.

Armenia's hold over Nagorno-Karabakh is not internationally recognised and, analysts say, has been a drag on the economy by blocking trade relations and trade routes with oil-rich Azerbaijan and neighbouring Turkey.

"Obviously, we are ready to negotiate on the security zone. That is the most realistic. We are in a position to speak about compromises. The Azeris do not have anything. They say 'we are also ready for compromise'.

"Ask them: what compromise? They say 'give everything back including Nagorno-Karabakh and after that we will not start hostilities.' That is not compromise, that is blackmail," Sarksyan said.

[traviskicks]

If I had to bet, I'd say this area of the globe is where the next major conflict is. I think we almost saw one flare up in Georiga a few months ago. Barely mentioned here in the US...