UN vote seen as damaging Karabakh peace process

U.S., Russia, France side with Armenia over Azerbaijan-proposed nonbinding measure

by Tatul Hakobyan

Published: Saturday March 22, 2008

Armen Martirosyan, the Permanent Representative of Armenia to the United Nations, addresses the General Assembly meeting concerning the situation in NKR, March 14, 2008. Jenny Rockett / UN Photo

Yerevan - The United Nations General Assembly on March 14 adopted an Azerbaijani-drafted resolution demanding the "immediate, complete and unconditional" withdrawal of all Armenian forces from all of Azerbaijan's occupied lands.

Thirty-nine states, mostly Muslim ones and the members of GUAM (Georgia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan, Moldova), voted in favor of the resolution titled, "The situation in the occupied territories of Azerbaijan." Seven, including OSCE Minsk Group co-chair states Russia, the United States, and France, as well as India, cast "no" votes, and another 150 states abstained or did not vote.

Armenia and Azerbaijan joined the United Nations in March 1992. Since then, the UN has adopted four mandatory Security Council resolutions on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. The General Assembly has also adopted a number of resolutions dealing with the conflict, and although they are nonbinding, each UN resolution has political significance, and therefore cannot be overlooked.

All four Security Council resolutions (822, 853, 874, and 884) were adopted during the Karabakh war, in the period from March to November of 1993, when Armenian forces successfully established a security zone around Nagorno-Karabakh, laying the groundwork for today's relative peace.

The first resolution of the General Assembly, which was titled "Emergency international assistance to refugees and displaced persons in Azerbaijan," was adopted on December 20, 1993.

Between 1997 and 2002, during votes on the annual resolutions on cooperation between the UN and the OSCE, Azerbaijan would introduce amendments with language supporting its claim on Nagorno-Karabakh. During those votes Armenia would be the lone country voting against Azerbaijan's proposals. In 1997, 1998, and 2000, the United States, European Union countries, and Russia voted for such amendments, essentially endorsing Azerbaijan claim. But since 2001, along with a majority of UN member states, they began to abstain, while Armenia would typically be a sole dissenting voice.

At the same time, Azerbaijan was successful in building a coalition of Islamic as well as GUAM states that voted with it, assuring the passage of its amendments.

In 2006, Azerbaijan alleged that Armenians were intentionally setting fires along the border (it was a particularly dry and hot summer), introducing a resolution to that effect that also again would reiterate Azerbaijan's claim on Karabakh. Under OSCE Minsk Group co-chair pressure, Azerbaijan pulled that resolution, instead agreeing to an OSCE fact-finding trip to Karabakh, which in the end did not substantiate Azerbaijani allegations.

In recent years, the GUAM states have introduced joint resolutions stressing the territorial integrity of each, but the resolutions were not brought up to a vote due to objections from Russia, in addition to Armenia.

What does the March 14 resolution say?

Resolutions adopted by the UN and other international organizations are usually not blatantly one-sided; they tend to contain items acceptable and items not very pleasant for the involved countries. However, this particular General Assembly resolution is openly one-sided.

The General Assembly called for the immediate, complete and unconditional withdrawal of Armenian forces "from all the occupied territories of Azerbaijan." It also called for "continued respect and support for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Azerbaijan within its internationally recognized borders." The resolution reaffirmed "the inalienable right of the population expelled from the occupied territories" of Azerbaijan to return to their homes, and to achieve that end it underlined the need for the comprehensive rehabilitation of all conflict-affected territories. No state should recognize as lawful the current situation in Nagorno-Karabakh, nor provide aid or assistance to maintain that situation, according to the text, which also called for "normal, secure and equal conditions of life for Armenian and Azerbaijani communities in the Nagorno-Karabakh region" so that "an effective democratic system of self-governance" can be built up.

Why now?

A question emerges: why was the resolution adopted right now? There could be several reasons, primarily the difficult domestic situation in Armenia. Evidently, Armenia didn't have enough time to utilize all its foreign-policy resources to prevent voting on the resolution, which it has successfully done in the past.

In his address before the vote, Armenia's representative in the UN, Ambassador Armen Martirosian, said that it was unprecedented for a draft resolution to be put to a vote without any consultations, and that the resolution's purpose was not to encourage or facilitate discussion. It was simply a way for Azerbaijan to list its wishes on a piece of paper, Amb. Martirossian stressed.

Yerevan and Baku respond

Certainly noteworthy is the fact that the OSCE Minsk co-chair countries - France, Russia, and the United States (which are also three of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council; the other two, the United Kingdom and China, abstained) - voted against the resolution and with Armenia.

Foreign Minister Vartan Oskanian appeared pleased: "I hope Azerbaijan got the message from the international community." He characterized the resolution as hypocritical: "On the one hand, in an effort to misinform member states, the resolution included a paragraph that supports the OSCE Minsk Process. On the other hand, Azerbaijan blatantly ignored the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs' position."

Azerbaijan's Deputy Foreign Minister Araz Azimov said the document has "legal and political force," saying that the resolution was introduced following Kosovo's unilateral declaration of independence from Serbia. "Hereby, the Assembly confirmed Azerbaijan's territorial integrity again," Azimov said, and that the resolution was a "serious warning" to the United States, Russia, and France.