2014 bears no fruit in terms of Nagorno-Karabakh conflict resolution
By Sara Rajabova
Negotiations on settlement of Armenian-Azerbaijani Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, which is a grave threat to the peace, stability and economic cooperation in the region, have not yielded the desired results during 2014.
Bahar Muradova, Vice-speaker of the Azerbaijani Parliament made the remark in her article published in the newspaper "Azerbaijan".
She said, unfortunately the leading states and international organizations which can have a real impact on the negotiation process, do not want to use their specific mechanisms of pressure to resolve the problem.
Muradova went on to say that the UN deals with geopolitical interests of some certain powers but takes a blind eye to others like Azerbaijan. “The fact that four UN resolutions adopted regarding Armenia still remain on paper, once again proves that not all UN Security Council decisions have corresponding efficiencies. All this gives unlimited freedom of action to the strong states. This not only violates human rights and freedoms, but also deals a blow to moral values, as well as the success of dialogue among civilizations,” Muradova said.
She stressed that the breakaway from fundamental principles of international law leads to injustice, which is unacceptable. She added that the notorious experience of freezing of international conflicts leads to such injustices.
“The freezing of conflicts on ethnic, racial and religious grounds is understandable, since it takes time for the normalization of relations between people. But it is accompanied by the occupation and international organizations, namely UN, remain indifferent towards it. The territory of a country is one of the key features for membership in the United Nations. UN's observation position on fact of violation of the territorial integrity of a member state and absence of measures for the speedy elimination of the occupation in the first place sow doubts about the necessity of international law,” Muradova said.
She underlined that this also damages the credibility of the UN, showing that it is guided by subjective factors in its activities.
Muradova went on to say that failure to perform four UN Security Council resolutions related to the occupation of Nagorno-Karabakh and surrounding areas testifies to this issue.
“The continued occupation of 20 percent of internationally recognized territory of Azerbaijan and the presence of more than one million refugees and internally displaced persons are resulted from different issues ranging from Christian solidarity to the geopolitical interests of the superpowers. In such circumstances, not only Azerbaijani refugees and internally displaced persons, but also all the Azerbaijanis and other progressive people who consider unacceptable the fact of occupation know well that the international law has turned into the "right of the strong," and the UN has become a "tool" that serves the interests of this force,” Muradova said.
Armenia captured Nagorno-Karabakh and seven surrounding districts from Azerbaijan in a war that followed the Soviet breakup in 1991. More than 20,000 Azerbaijanis were killed and nearly 1 million were displaced as a result of the war.
Large-scale hostilities ended with a Russia-brokered ceasefire in 1994 but Armenia continued the occupation in defiance of four UN Security Council resolutions calling for immediate and unconditional withdrawal.
Peace talks mediated by Russia, France and the U.S. have produced no results so far.