NAGORNO-KARABAKH POLLS CAUSE FRESH INTERNATIONAL CRITICISM
On May 23, Nagorno-Karabakh held its fifth parliamentary elections since 1992, when the first parliamentary ballot took place. The Central Electoral Committee put the turnout figure at around 70 percent of some 95,000 eligible voters. According to the final results, the majority of the 33 seats were taken by the Free Homeland Party led by incumbent Prime Minister Ara Harutiunian, followed by Parliamentary Speaker Ashot Ghulian’s Democratic Party of Artsakh [Karabakh] and the ARF-Dashnaktsutiun Party.
While international observers, consisting of MPs from Armenia, Russia, Slovakia and Argentina, hailed the elections as exemplary, the vote was condemned by opposition forces in Nagorno-Karabakh for a lack of competitiveness which brought only pro-government parties to the new legislature.
The UN, the EU, and the Council of Europe made statements about non-recognition of the vote. Statements to the same effect were issued by Azerbaijan, Turkey, Georgia, Russia, and France. The OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs reacted by expressing their understanding of “the need for the de facto authorities in NK to try to organize democratically the public life of their population”. Nevertheless, they pointed out that no country, including Armenia, had recognized NK’s independence and that the elections should not “pre-empt the determination of the final legal status of Nagorno-Karabakh in the broader framework of the peaceful settlement”.
In response, Armenia’s Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandyan stated on May 24 that the orderly administration of the vote proved Karabakh’s commitment to democracy and the rule of law. Nalbandyan also underlined that provisions about dialogue with the elected representatives of Nagorno-Karabakh were part of the mandate for organizing the 1992 Minsk peace conference. Indeed, the decision taken at the Additional Meeting of the CSCE Council in Helsinki in March 1992 to organize the Minsk conference stipulated the participation of “elected and other representatives of Nagorno-Karabakh” – an argument Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh have since been using to provide international legal substantiation for five parliamentary, four presidential, and four municipal elections, as well as one constitutional referendum administered since 1992.
All Karabakh elections have routinely been criticized by the international community. This vote, however, took place in an unusually sensitive environment, which emerged after the so-called Madrid Principles put on the table in 2007 provided for a popular vote to determine the final status of Nagorno-Karabakh. With Armenia and Azerbaijan remaining at odds on the modalities of such a vote, any expression of popular will in Karabakh appears as a direct endorsement of the current status.
Armenia and Azerbaijan indeed appear to have hardened their positions. Differing interpretations of the right to self-determination most recently highlighted in the July 10, 2009, statement of the presidents of the U.S., Russia and France in L’Aquila and the December 2 OSCE Athens Ministerial statement, revealed a new wave of intransigency. The Azerbaijani Foreign Minister announced in March 2010 that Azerbaijan regarded the right to self-determination only within the limits of Azerbaijani sovereignty. President Serzh Sargsyan, in turn, stated on June 2 in Russia’s southern city of Rostov-on-Don that Armenia will not “haggle over the Nagorno-Karabakh people’s right to self-determination”. Sargsyan, who visited Russia to discuss the results of President Medvedev’s visit to Turkey, also ruled out any role for Turkey in the Karabakh peace talks.
Yet, misgivings about Turkey attaining a role in the talks remain a major concern in Yerevan. This, as well as a sense of a wider negative shift again came into the spotlight with the Resolution on “The need for an EU strategy for the South Caucasus” adopted by the European Parliament (EP) on May 20. The provision drawing most criticism in Yerevan, from both governing as well as opposition forces, was the demand for a rapid pullout of Armenian forces from “all occupied Azerbaijani lands”. As for Turkey, the resolution confirmed that the Turkish-Armenian normalization and the Nagorno-Karabakh peace talks were separate processes, but also reaffirmed that “the positions of Russia, Turkey and the U.S. play an important role in conflict resolution in the South Caucasus”, thus validating arguments that Turkey had gained international endorsement to seek a greater role in the NK conflict as a result of the Turkish-Armenian process.
While legally non-binding, the resolutions adopted by European parliamentary bodies are nevertheless perceived to have far reaching negative implications for Armenia. They seem to uphold the Azerbaijani dissatisfaction with the OSCE Minsk Group, raising Yerevan’s fear of alternative negotiating formats. Most recently, this was displayed by Yerevan’s strong opposition to attempts at revitalizing the PACE ad hoc committee on Nagorno-Karabakh established by Resolution 1416 (2005) of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, despite its primary purpose of facilitating dialogue on a parliamentary level. The suggestion of the EP Resolution to replace the French co-chairmanship in the Minsk Group with an EU mandate was interpreted along the same lines.
Renewed efforts by the co-chairs to revive the stalled process could be the best solution to allay Yerevan’s fears and restore Azerbaijan’s confidence in the Minsk Group. However, despite the announced intention of the co-chairs after the June 4 meeting in Venice with Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Mammadyarov to “restore momentum to the peace process”, Mammadyarov’s remarks about Armenia’s “conceptual” differences in its interpretation of the updated Madrid Proposals, only prove that the sides have yet to make the most difficult compromises.
