ICG: An opportunity has opened to reset deadlocked talks on Nagorno  Karabakh

ArmInfo. An opportunity has opened to reset deadlocked  talks between Baku and Yerevan over the breakaway region of  Nagorno-Karabakh. The parties are a long way apart, but negotiations  could help prevent a new escalation after years of growing  militarisation and lay the groundwork for the conflict's eventual  resolution. The authors of report ''Digging out of Deadlock in  Nagorno Karabakh'' prepared by International Crisis Group (ICG) came  to such a conclusion. 

The window may close if Baku and Yerevan do not act. Already the thaw  in Armenia-Azerbaijan relations shows signs of frost, the authors of  the report think. Without talks on key issues - the future of areas  adjacent to Nagorno- Karabakh and people currently residing there,  prospects for international peacekeeping, and Nagorno-Karabakh's  status - positions risk hardening further.?

The authors of the report believe that on the adjacent territories,  temporarily freezing new settlement construction in return for  Azerbaijan refraining from legal action or new sanctions could  improve prospects for talks.  '' Yerevan argues that decisions  regarding settlement expansion are in Stepanakert's hands. In  reality, however, Armenia has considerable influence as Nagorno-  Karabakh's main security guarantor, provider of around half of its  budget and main market for its products. For its part, Baku is likely  to oppose such reciprocal steps, fearing that pausing legal action in  return for a settlement freeze would risk appearing to accept  existing settlements at a time when it feels there is greater  international support for its stance. 

The second issue revolves around the composition and mandate of a  potential international peacekeeping or monitoring mission. Such a  mission could help minimise violence, create conditions for a peace  deal and monitor or enforce such a deal if and when one is reached.  While proposals have been circulated intermittently since 1994,  particularly by Russia, no such force has ever deployed.  The parties  have both tended to oppose a military force or one with an outsized  Russian role. An OSCE HLPG was set up in the 1990s to plan for such  missions but - in the absence of progress in talks - has foundered.  With the support of the parties, the OSCE could reinvigorate it and  task it with a specific, time-delimited (perhaps one year) mandate to  define a set of options. These could then form the basis for the  parties' discussions on such a mission.  The last issue is  Nagorno-Karabakh's independence claim, at the conflict's core and the  hardest to resolve. Armenia and Stepanakert insist on statehood. Baku  is at most prepared to offer Nagorno- Karabakh self-rule within  Azerbaijan. Though the parties share little common ground, there are  tentative signs of movement. In Azerbaijan, senior officials have  begun exploring precisely what granting the region autonomy would  entail and how a referendum on its status could be organised. Their  ideas remain far from anything Yerevan or Stepanakert would accept;  nor do they reflect an accurate grasp of life and governance in  Nagorno-Karabakh today. They could, however, offer an opening for  discussion. Given the sensitivity of the issue and the distance  between the parties, any talks on status would likely have to start  discreetly and semi- formally, the experts note. 

The experts consider that direct talks between the parties inevitably  entail risks. They could highlight the distance between the two  sides' positions, thereby fuelling mutual anger and potentially  reversing the past months' gains. But years of continued stalemate  have put a potential solution further out of reach and isolated  Armenians and Azerbaijanis from one another.  The more time goes by,  the more facts on the ground will be entrenched, the harder they will  be to reverse and the graver the risk of war. If talks might make  matters worse, their continued absence almost certainly will. Getting  back to the table will be difficult but is the only way Armenia and  Azerbaijan can start digging out of their deadlock.

In the last eighteen months, however, Armenian and Azerbaijani  leaders have taken steps to reverse what had seemed a slide toward a  new war. Direct leadership contactsand communication channels between  security personnel and political representatives in capitals have  minimised flare-ups and casualties. Both countries' leaders also  agreed to launch humanitarian projects and support visits of  relatives of detainees held in each other's capitals as well as of  journalists, the first of which occurred in November.This slight thaw  marks a substantial shift. It is the first reversal in what had been  a steady decline in relations since the April 2016 clashes.

Meanwhile, official Baku had already reacted to the ICG report  yesterday. "Azerbaijan welcomes the International Crisis Group (ICG)  for keeping on the agenda important issues related to the settlement  of the Armenian-Azerbaijani Nagorno-Karabakh conflict," said the  official representative of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of  Azerbaijan Leyla Abdulayeva. She noted that <the ICG's latest report  did not address any new issues; the document only pays attention to  important topics that Azerbaijan has already raised for many years>.  Abdulaeva commented on the report, while remaining true to the  official position of the Azerbaijani leadership on all three points:  <occupation>, <risk assessment> and <status already determined in the  framework of the national legislation of Azerbaijan>. Abdulaeva in  fact also said nothing new.

Headquartered in Brussels, the International Crisis Group (ICG) is an  independent, non-profit, multinational organization that brings  together about 80 employees on five continents. The organization  analyzes the situation on the ground and actively advocates for the  prevention and containment of deadly conflicts. Based on the  information and assessments made on the ground, the ICG publishes  analytical reports that provide practical recommendations addressed  to key international political decision-makers.