Azernews.Az

BAKU – The summit of the OSCE held this week for the first time in more than a decade, "failed to justify the expectations" of both Azerbaijan and other participating countries, a senior Azerbaijani official has said.

Novruz Mammadov, the head of the Presidential Administration international relations department, said the OSCE, which is charged with ensuring European security and taking strides in this area, barely adopted a final declaration following lengthy discussions. He added the OSCE has now "turned into an amorphous organization".

During the summit, which took place December 1-2 in Kazakhstan’s capital Astana, the OSCE was expected to adopt an action plan to strengthen the security group's role in the future, but no agreement was reached among the group’s members. Diplomats said that efforts to find a deal had been torpedoed by rows over Georgia's breakaway regions, the Armenia-Azerbaijan dispute and the Moldovan rebel region of Transdniestr.

Mammadov noted that the South Caucasus is part of Europe and the OSCE should therefore deal with the region’s security. "But, unfortunately, this was not seen either in the run-up or during the summit."

Azerbaijani Deputy Foreign Minister Araz Azimov has said that despite Baku’s extensive efforts, the position of some countries had prevented reflecting the main principles underlying flaring conflicts in the documents adopted at the Astana summit.

Azimov noted that nonetheless, Azerbaijan achieved making "statements of principle" at the summit. He noted that Kazakh Foreign Minister Kanat Saudabayev, who serves as the OSCE chairman, had issued an additional statement in conclusion upon Baku’s request. The statement enumerated the principles of the Helsinki Final Act, which envisions non-use of force, territorial integrity and self-determination of nations.

"This statement is also considered an official document of the summit. It concerns the principles for settling protracted conflicts. It lays out the principles taken as a basis for conflict resolution and confirms that these principles have the same importance and legal effect in 2010 as they did in 1975. All these principles are inter-related and are to be enforced the same way. This statement meets our interests."

Azerbaijan waged a war with Armenia over the Nagorno Karabakh region in the early 1990s, which claimed some 30,000 lives and displaced about a million Azerbaijanis. Armenian armed forces have been occupying over 20 percent of Azerbaijan’s territory since then, and OSCE-brokered peace talks have been largely fruitless so far.

According to Azimov, Azerbaijan has agreed to working out a model that would grant autonomy to the Armenian population of Nagorno Karabakh within the country’s territorial integrity, and, as stated in the Helsinki document, the right to self-determination cannot violate the territorial integrity principle but should be exercised in concert with it.

Though the separatist regime in Nagorno Karabakh declared so-called independence at the time of the Soviet collapse in 1991, this "independence" has not been recognized by the world community.