Conflict settlement still far away despite creation of PACE Subcommittee on Nagorno Karabakh

PanARMENIAN.Net - All the activities of Cavusoglu were aimed at resuscitation of the PACE Subcommittee on Nagorno-Karabakh. And we must admit that Cavusoglu succeeded, to the delight of Azerbaijan and Turkey. Simply it’s not yet clear what this Subcommittee is to be engaged in. Both the President of PACE and the deputies are well aware that no resolution adopted by this organization can be of binding effect. One may say that PACE is less weighty than the UN, but it has the same status: all of its resolutions are advisory in nature. Under these circumstances whatever decision the subcommittee makes, the negotiation process of regulating the Karabakh conflict will not change and will continue solely within the framework of the OSCE Minsk Group. At least it will be so until the very OSCE abandons its mandate, which in the foreseeable future seems unrealistic.

The desire of Azerbaijan and that of Turkey to take the regulation process out of the scope of the OSCE and take control of the process is, of course, understandable but impracticable. Authorities of both countries obviously do not have enough understanding of international law and that of the OSCE Minsk Group regulations, which clearly states that an interested party cannot serve as a mediator. Probably, Baku and Ankara believe that regulations and credentials of OSCE Minsk Group have been forgotten over years, and a new game can be started. In all these suppositions both countries somehow “forget” about Armenia and Artsakh. Well, it’s their business.

The subcommittee’s activity is dangerous from another point of view. As an instrument of propaganda it is rather powerful, and there is no guarantee that after proper “training”, almost all of the PACE deputies will not share the Azeri viewpoint. Naturally, Armenian delegation can boycott the activity of the Subcommittee, but how justified will it be? The fact of the boycott could mean if not acceptance, at least toleration of the established status of PACE. This, in its turn, could lead to a situation when deputies of the Council of Europe may indeed believe that Azerbaijan is a developing democratic state, and all she wants is to take the territories that do not belong to her. But very little do PACE members know about the history of the Karabakh conflict and, accordingly, about the ownership of these lands. They do not know, because it is uninteresting and economically unprofitable; Karabakh has neither oil nor gas, whereas Baku has. Perhaps we repeat ourselves, but such is the reality: had Karabakh any hydrocarbons, the world would talk to her quite differently.

According to Director of Political and Social Research Institute for Black Sea-Caspian Region, Professor Vladimir Zakharov, the PACE Subcommittee on Nagorno-Karabakh is another abortive structure, designed to portray “a storm of activity on regulating the Karabakh conflict”. According to him, neither the PACE Subcommittee nor the OSCE Minsk Group will be able to settle the Karabakh conflict. “The problem is that the OSCE Minsk Group Co-chairs have failed to perform their duties properly and are engaged in their own PR campaign only. To resolve the conflict, its causes and history should be studied, what appears impossible for the Co-chairs,” said the Russian expert.

There will still appear a series of “abortive structures”; Azerbaijan has no other way to draw the world’s attention to the Karabakh problem. Unfortunately, Azerbaijan fails to understand that the world currently has neither time nor interest to address the Karabakh issue. There exists the threat of complete Islamization of the Middle East, fraught with serious troubles for the world powers, to say the least.