WHAT DOES THE RECOGNITION OF KOSOVO’S INDEPENDENCE TESTIFY TO?

As was expected, on February 17 the Parliament of Kosovo unanimously (with 109 votes) passed the Declaration of Independence of the former Serbian territory. The fact was immediately recognized by a number of states.
Such a step, initiated by Kosovo’s leadership, was previously agreed with the United States and the EU countries which, by way of handing over the UN Control Package to the European Union, actually overcome the threat of the Russian veto in the Security Council and undertake the implementation of the “Ahtisaary Plan” granting a controlled independence to the territory.
Azerbaijan and Turkey have adopted rather interesting attitudes towards Kosovo’s declaring independence. The former, as expected, condemned the fact. In his estimations, Khazar Ibrahim, Press Secretary of the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry, officially announced that it “contravenes the norms of international law and is illegal”.
In contrast to that, Turkey became one of the first countries to recognize Kosovo’s independence.
Thus, in the current sharp international-legal conflict, Baku and Ankara have found themselves on the opposite sides of the barricades. Considering Karabakh as part of its territory, Azerbaijan is worried about the fact of changing Serbia’s borders without its consent, as this is a clear-cut precedent recorded on the territory of the OSCE which acts a as mediator in the Karabakh peace process.
It’s natural that Baku is currently trying, in this particular context, to examine the settlement principles submitted in Madrid by the Minsk Group on November 29, 2007. But that discussion arouses a greater anxiety among the Azerbaijani experts.
The thing is that, the international peacekeeping forces used to enter Kosovo by the consent of Serbia as well. Whereas the settlement principles the OSCE Minsk Group submitted to both countries’ Foreign Ministers in Madrid on November 29, 2007 also imply the entrance of the international peacekeeping forces into the zone of the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict. It turns out that the international peacekeepers, which currently prevent Serbia from resuming the military operations, may do the same in Nagorno Karabakh in future, should Azerbaijan try not to recognize the results of the referendum to be held in Nagorno Karabakh in several years’ time and resume the military operations.
So, Ilgar Mamedov, commentator of “Day-Az” agency, definitely claims that, “if, in the near future, the official Baku is unable to speedily prevent the Prague process which has become so deceptive, it is obliged to promptly change its attitude with regard to the peacekeepers. Since, during the past 14 years we did not need the peacekeepers for maintaining the ceasefire regime, why do we need them at the phase of implementing the agreement?” It is well formulated, but in that case why we, Armenians, need the return the liberated territories in conditions of the absence of the international forces which are unsteady, as it is?
It turns out that,
First: the Azerbaijani side confesses that the phase settlement of the Karabakh conflict was just a tool for it to get back the liberated territories and at the end, resume the military operations against Nagorno Karabakh, without acknowledging its status.
Second: Feeling that this trick will no longer work in view of the Kosovo precedent, Azerbaijan will strive, in the near future, to renounce the clause regarding the international peacekeepers, as enshrined in the proposal introduced by the OSCE Minsk Group in Madrid.
Third: not agreeing even with the option of the mixed, phase package currently advanced at the negotiation table, Azerbaijan will, in the near future, insist solely on the necessity of phase settlement, without clarifying the NKR status and deploying the international peacekeepers, which will naturally lead the negotiation process to a deadlock.
And all this happens in such conditions when, in the electoral struggle which has already finished in Armenia, Mr. Ter-Petrosyan was persistently trying to revive the option of the phase solution approved by him back in 1997, hoping that the international peacekeepers would enter the conflict zone and enshrine he de facto situation for an indefinite period of time.
Whereas now that Kosovo has declared independence, and Azerbaijan is no longer willing to know anything about the deployment of the international peacekeepers in the conflict zone, there no longer exist the trivial possibilities for the phase settlement of the Karabakh conflict, which served as a basis for L. Ter-Petrosyan for building “air castles” during his campaign.
ARMEN TSATOURYAN

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