InternationalMadrid principles put Armenia on verge of Lisbon 2
Diplomatic setback could lead to domestic crisis
Published: Saturday July 18, 2009
President Serge Sargsian on a visit to Gyumri this week. He is under fire over diplomatic setbacks in talks with Turkey and Azerbaijan. Tigran Tadevosian / Photolure
Washington - The long-running Karabakh conflict and the associated peace process have captured unusual levels of attention from global and regional leaders in recent months and weeks.
This increased attention brought about the Moscow declaration on Karabakh made by Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Russia last November, the first declaration of its kind since 1992.
And, last week, the statement by the presidents of France, Russia, and the United States at the G8 Summit became the first such statement since 1997.
The troika statement also provided the outline of the so-called updated Madrid Document outlining the Basic Principles of a settlement that leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan were urged to finalize.
While the fundamental issue at the core of the conflict - Karabakh's status - is no closer to resolution, a certain confluence of circumstances has put the recent negotiations on a track that could precipitate a serious domestic challenge for President Serge Sargsian and the administration he leads.
Key figures in both Stepanakert and Yerevan have already indicated opposition to the principles outlined in the updated Madrid principles and to the Armenian government's overall approach to talks with Azerbaijan as well as Turkey.
Pyrenean prequel
The Madrid principles are so known because they were initially submitted to the parties by French, Russian, and U.S. negotiators at the ministerial meeting of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) held in the Spanish capital in November 2007.
Eleven years earlier, it was in Lisbon, the other capital on the Iberian or, as it is also known, Pyrenean peninsula, where Armenia's diplomacy suffered one of its worst defeats.
At the OSCE summit held in December 1996, Armenia had to threaten its right to veto of the summit declaration because it included a reference supporting Azerbaijan's claim on Karabakh. As a result, a statement by an OSCE chairman-in-office that contained that endorsement was issued instead.
Six months later, at the G8 summit in Denver, leaders of France, Russia, and the United States issued a joint statement that essentially endorsed the Lisbon approach.
By the fall of 1997, then-President Levon Ter-Petrossian appeared diplomatically defeated and agreed to a plan that would have Armenian forces pull out from parts of Karabakh in exchange for international security guarantees, but without addressing the final status of Karabakh.
But Azerbaijan's Pyrenean victory proved a Pyrrhic one. In February 1998, Mr. Ter-Petrossian was forced to resign by key members of his government opposed to the proposed pullout.
Mediation pendulum
Since the 1990s there has been a significant shift in how the U.S.-led international community approaches the Karabakh conflict. In large part, that shift was precipitated by President Robert Kocharian, who, unlike his predecessor, publicly insisted on a settlement that would formalize the existing "non-subordination" of Karabakh to Azerbaijan.
If in the past, mediators sought to find mechanisms to place Karabakh inside Azerbaijan as a self-governing state entity, for most of the last decade the focus shifted to finding mechanisms to formalize Karabakh's factual independence from Azerbaijan. That was the focus of talks at the summit in Key West and throughout the subsequent Prague process.
But in a departure from the policies of his father and predecessor Heydar Aliyev, Azerbaijan's Ilham Aliyev took a progressively tougher policy line, demanding unilateral Armenian concessions and ruling out Azerbaijani acquiescence to Karabakh's de facto separation from Azerbaijan.
The diplomatic pendulum began to swing away from Armenian preferences.
A key indication of this shift came after the August war between Russia and Georgia last year. As part of a response to a conflict that threatened to undermine U.S. influence, State Department officials sought to shore up ties with Azerbaijan by putting greater emphasis on Azerbaijan's territorial integrity in U.S. policy language on Karabakh.
According to available reports, since their original submission in 2007, the Madrid principles have gone through significant mutations. Specifically, the mechanism and timing for the determination of Nagorno-Karabakh's final status have been further watered down.
Thus, for the first time in more than a decade, mediators have offered a proposal that is more acceptable to Azerbaijan than to Armenia. From an Armenian perspective, they present only a cosmetic improvement over the 1997 "stage-by-stage" plan that ended Mr. Ter-Petrossian's presidency.
Lisbon redux?
While the proposal itself does not necessarily augur changes for the situation on the ground, it does represent a significant diplomatic setback for Armenia.
In addition to Azerbaijani activism on Karabakh, this setback can be traced to miscalculations by Armenia's leadership that are now proving costly.
Since taking office last year President Sargsian launched a diplomatic initiative with Turkey - where Armenia has few ways to leverage a positive outcome - rather than on Karabakh, where Armenians have advantages on the ground, as well as the recent precedents in Kosovo and Ossetia.
Similarly, rather than seeking to win international recognition of Karabakh immediately after its declaration of independence, the Ter-Petrossian administration focused on trying to establish relations with Turkey "without preconditions," a policy that proved fruitless.
