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Azerbaijan and Armenia should halt their dangerous arms race and restrain their belligerent rhetoric and instead renew efforts to find a negotiated settlement for the Upper (Nagorno) Garabagh region, the International Crisis Group (ICG) says.
The group's latest report, Nagorno-Karabakh: Risking War, examines "the dangers of ignoring the conflict both for the region and for the wider international community."
Oil money has given Azerbaijan new self-confidence and the means to upgrade its armed forces. Armenia has done surprisingly well economically and is increasing its own military expenditures. With both countries now building military capacity, neither believes it is time to compromise, the strategic research center said.
The group called on the world community to ratchet up pressure on the sides to reach agreement.
"The international community needs to take the threat of war within a few years seriously", says Magdalena Frichova, Crisis Group Caucasus Project Director. "The risk of armed conflict is growing, and the dangers of complacency are enormous".
Commenting on the ICG's report, the Azerbaijan Foreign Ministry spokesman Khazar Ibrahim made it clear that Baku remains committed to negotiations.
"I don't know what the Crisis Group based its conclusion upon," he said. "The Azerbaijani side continues peace talks, and we hope they will yield results."
Ibrahim explained existing problems by Yerevan's non-constructive stance.
Armenia and Azerbaijan waged a war over the mountainous province in the early 1990s, which claimed some 30,000 lives and displaced about a million Azerbaijanis. Armenia has been occupying over 20% of Azerbaijan's internationally-recognized territory since then. The ceasefire accord was signed in 1994, but the OSCE-brokered peace talks have been fruitless so far.
The ICG said hope for diplomatic progress has been consistently undermined by the parties' lack of political will and insufficient international resolve. Over the past few years, the leaderships of both countries have turned their publics increasingly against compromise, while boosting military expenditures. Both trends must be reversed, it said.
The current negotiations - the Prague process, facilitated since April 2004 by the Minsk Group of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and led by France, Russia and the U.S. - can provide the framework for a negotiated settlement. Elections in both Azerbaijan and Armenia will complicate the political environment in 2008, however, so the sides should agree on a document of basic principles, even one that specifies where disagreements remain, before the polls. Such a result would secure what has been agreed upon so far and maintain the process during the year, the report said.
The ICG said the Minsk Group co-chairs and the wider international community should coordinate efforts to impress on both countries the need for progress. The EU and the U.S. should make the resolution of the Garabagh conflict a key element of relations with the parties. The role of the EU special representative for the South Caucasus (EUSR) should be strengthened and European Neighborhood Policy (ENP) reviews and funding should be used to promote confidence building, in addition to institution building and human rights.
"The international community needs to press hard for peace", says Sabine Freizer, Crisis Group's Europe Program Director. "Conditionality should be used with financial aid instruments, and active diplomacy should focus both sides on the costs of continued stalemate and confrontation, which far outweigh those of an early compromise".
The Azerbaijani government has dismissed the ICG report as biased. Head of the President's Office international relations department, Novruz Mammadov, said he considered it neither accurate nor fair. The document does not reflect reality and meets the interests of only the founders of the organization that prepared it, according to Mammadov.
"If we are talking about a fair conflict settlement in accord with international legal norms, this non-governmental organization, without the fear of anything or anyone, should have based its assessment on international law and supported Azerbaijan's fair position at least in keeping with the resolutions of the UN Security Council [on unconditional withdrawal of the Armenian armed forces from the occupied Azerbaijani land]," the official said.
He said such NGOs were unwilling to sincerely serve the principles of justice and failing to strive for the truth. "Very unfortunately, they are instead raising various issues meeting the interests of some," Mammadov concluded.