by
Martin Banks
Polish national parliamentarian Tadeusz Iwinski believes the OSCE Minsk group is now untenable despite still being the basis of the peace process endorsed by the international community, including the Council of Europe.
The Minsk Group is the main international format advancing a peaceful solution to the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict.
Speaking at the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe summer session in Strasbourg he said: "It's ridiculous because more than 20 years has elapsed and this (unresolved conflict) is the status quo. The OSCE Minsk group is dead".
As a result, he said the occupation of Nagorno-Karabakh and seven surrounding territories remains the "gospel truth"that overshadows everything in Azerbaijan, and on that basis on Tuesday fought off attempts from the floor of the assembly to have all mention of the conflict removed from his report.
Co-authored with fellow PACE rapporteur Pedro Agramunt, the document examines Azerbaijan's democratic institutions ahead of the November parliamentary elections.
It is highly critical of the pace of legal, political and electoral reform in Azerbaijan but Iwinski argued to remove all reference to Nagorno-Karabakh from the 23-page document would have been a failure to acknowledge the "complex geopolitical context of Azerbaijan".
"The war over Nagorno-Karabakh that started in 1992 resulted in the occupation of 20 percent of Azerbaijani territory with more than one million IDPs," he said after the session.
"The issue of Nagorno-Karabakh overshadows everything (in Azerbaijan)".
PACE delegate and Azerbaijani MP Elkhan Suleymanov said the crisis in Ukraine was another factor destabilising the region.
On the debate over the PACE rapporteurs'report he said: "To have removed all references to an occupation that to this day blights the lives of so many people would have been an injustice in itself."
Nagorno-Karabakh has been described as one of the last remaining so called "frozen conflicts" in Europe which still remains unresolved to this day.
Fighting broke out in the late 1980s during the final days of the Soviet Union, with ethnic Armenians taking control of Nagorno-Karabakh and a land corridor linking it to Armenia.
But this tiny, mountainous region is still the subject of a bitter dispute between Armenia and Azerbaijan, years after the ceasefire. Armenian forces won the war and now control Nagorno-Karabakh, after the Azeri population fled and years of negotiations have failed to deliver a peace deal.
Azerbaijan says Nagorno-Karabakh must not be allowed to break away.
But a spokesman for the Armenian Mission to the EU told this website that the region "has the right to choose its
own destiny."
Parliamentary elections will be held in Azerbaijan on either November 1st or 8th. Baku has invited an observer delegation from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) and has promised a "free and fair poll".´
PACE secretary general Thorbjørn Jagland touched upon the Nagorno Karabakh conflict in Strasbourg and mentioned that the OSCE Minsk Group is engaged in this issue.
He said, "We all know this issue is complicated and sensitive. The situation related to Azerbaijan depends on OSCE Minsk Group. We have not mandate in this regard, don't attend the negotiations. I'm closely and regularly following the question that have been raised this week."
Jagland added, "It's true, there is no result and this is explained with the difficulty of the situation. And you know it better than me".
By: N. Peter Kramer
