Plans for a meeting between the foreign ministers of Azerbaijan and Armenia in Mauerbach, Austria next week are still in place, despite an armed escalation of tensions yesterday that resulted in the death of two Azerbaijanis, including a two-year-old baby girl.
Armenia’s Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandyan and Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov had been scheduled to meet on July 11 in Austria during an Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) Informal Ministerial Meeting to review the current state of affairs regarding the decades-old dispute over Nagorniy-Karabakh, a region within Azerbaijan that is currently controlled by Armenia and considered one of the world’s post-Soviet “frozen conflicts.”
On July 4, Armenian forces fired on Alkhanli village, located in the Fuzuli district of Azerbaijan, which borders Nagorniy-Karabakh, using 82 and 120-millimeter mortars and heavy grenade launchers. According to a defence ministry report, residents of the village, including 50-year old Sahiba Guliyeva and her two-year-old granddaughter Zahra Guliyeva, were killed. Servinaz Guliyeva, age 52, was wounded and hospitalized.
Next week’s meeting is expected to weigh the pros and cons of reigniting direct talks between the two sides to resolve the conflict, and possibly lead to what will be the first meeting between the presidents of Azerbaijan and Armenia since the Four Day War, or “April War,” which saw the two sides pitted against one another between April 1-5, 2016 in what was the bloodiest flare-up over Nagorniy-Karabakh since the early 1990s.
The last time the two sides met was in Moscow, when Armenia’s Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandyan, Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov sat down for talks on April 28.
Armenia is accused of trying to avoid direct negotiations at any cost. Leaders in Yerevan have called for first authorizing permanent observers to be stationed along the line of contact, saying such a move is necessary to maintain the ceasefire. Although there are currently no observers permanently stationed along the line of contact, whenever monitoring is conducted, four field assistants from the Office of the Personal Representative of the OSCE Chairperson-in-Office visit, as representatives of OSCE member states. Azerbaijan, for its part, views Armenia’s demand for permanent observers as a pretext to stall any reasonable effort to find a solution to the conflict.
“We have agreed on increasing the number of international observers up to seven. However, there is no agreement on details. These include placing observers, financing their activities, and other technical issues. Along with relevant OSCE structures and representatives of the sides, Austria, which chairs the organization, is working to bring the sides to an agreement on this issue,” Russia’s OSCE Co-Chair Igor Popov told Azerbaijan’s Azeri-Press Agency news agency in an exclusive interview on May 26.
Baku has repeatedly expressed its consent to hammer out a lasting peace agreement to end hostilities and ignite productive relations between it and Yerevan, but sees Armenia as playing for time and avoiding substantive negotiations, in order to preserve the status quo in Nagorniy Karabakh, whereby it maintains control.
“Armenia wants to keep the status quo unchanged and ignores the strong statements of the mediators, which are three permanent members of Security Council – France, Russia and United States, whose leaders on many occasions have said that status quo is not acceptable, and status quo must be changed. And change of status quo means the beginning of de-occupation of the territory of Azerbaijan,” President Ilham Aliyev said at the Fifth Global Baku Forum held in March.
“During their last visit to the region, the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs made a proposal to hold a meeting of the foreign ministers,” Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry Hikmat Haciyev said, referring to the tripartite group chaired by representatives from the US, Russia, and France which are charged with assisting Azerbaijan and Armenia to find a peaceful solution to the conflict.
“Azerbaijan expressed its consent and willingness regarding the proposal,” Haciyev said, adding that Baku seeks a “change of the inadmissible and unsustainable status quo,” referring to Armenia’s occupation of Nagorniy Karabakh and stationing of troops inside and around the region.
Not everyone is convinced that peaceful means will bring about a resolution to the conflict.
Azerbaijan’s Member of Parliament Araz Alizada, commenting on the upcoming meeting in Austria, lashed out, saying such efforts are "absolutely pointless to negotiate with Armenia,” arguing that no country will return lands seized as a result of war through negotiations.
"The territorial integrity of Azerbaijan can only be restored by the Azerbaijani army and only by force. The April 2016 war showed that the Azerbaijani armed forces are capable of accomplishing such a task," Alizada said.
During the four-day April War, Azerbaijan managed to reclaim some of the territories it had lost to Armenia during the conflict in the early 1990s. Areas reclaimed included the strategic hilltop known as Lala Tapa, which oversees a swathe of Azerbaijani land, including the newly-reconstructed Jojug Marjanli village that borders Iran.
The role of the three OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chair countries is not viewed positively in Azerbaijan, with some MPs believing it is interested in preserving the status quo.
"If Moscow believes that, thanks to the existing status quo, Azerbaijan and Armenia can be kept in a limbo, then for the leaders of France and the United States, the existing situation creates opportunities to get millions of votes of Armenian [diaspora] voters in [their] elections,” Alizada said.
“From the political point of view, the negotiations will not bring a just solution to the Karabakh conflict," Alizada added.
In 1988, Armenia ignited what became a lengthy war against Azerbaijan, by laying claim to the Nagorniy Karabakh region in Azerbaijan. As a result of the war, which lasted until Russia brokered a ceasefire in 1994, Armenia’s armed forces have occupied approximately 20 percent of Azerbaijan's territories, including Nagorniy Karabakh and seven surrounding districts.
Over 20,000 Azerbaijanis were killed and over one million people were displaced as a result of the war. Although the United Nations Security Council has called for full withdrawal of Armenian troops from Nagorniy Karabakh and surrounding areas in four separate resolutions, troops remained stationed throughout.
Actions taken by Armenian-sponsored separatists in Nagorniy Karabakh on Tuesday, ahead of the G20 summit that will be held in Hamburg, Germany from July 7-8, are an outright provocation by Armenia, according to Russian parliamentarian Dmitry Savelyev.
“[The July 4 incident] should be assessed by the international community, which should double efforts for the peaceful settlement of the Karabakh conflict,” Savelyev told Sputnik Azerbaijan news agency. “The norms of international law must work on the war-torn land, the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan must be restored in the shortest possible time," Savelyev, who heads Russia-Azerbaijan Friendship Group in Russia’s State Duma, added.
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