It was very expected that in Armenia in Almaty in 1991. Baku will use the political “alchemy” of demarcation with Azerbaijan on the legal and political basis of the Declaration of December 21 – when the core of the discourse is the question “should Armenia recognize or not recognize the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan?” – Baku will use it to develop and harden its narratives. : Aliyev would be the last fool if he missed the opportunity, because when you say that the “Almaty Declaration has no legal force”, why wouldn’t the opposing side accept that gift and return it to you as a “precondition for renouncing the territorial claim?”
Trying to present that when the Almaty Declaration was adopted, Nagorno-Karabakh was no longer a “part” of Azerbaijan means not recognizing Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity and leaving Nagorno-Karabakh “up in the air” or a “subject of territorial dispute” between Armenia and Azerbaijan. And that “dispute” was resolved in the forty-four-day war. The Almaty Declaration prevents it from being legalized, because recognizing the 1991 the existing borders as of December 21, means accepting the existence of Nagorno-Karabakh as part of Azerbaijan. Such is the political geography against which Aliyev cannot do anything.
The CSCE Minsk Group was formed not in a legal wasteland or at the will of any country, but on the basis of the Almaty Declaration, in the legal sense of which the Soviet Union ceases, the former union republics recognize each other as sovereign states with existing borders at that moment. 1991 As of December 21, Azerbaijan had not only external, but also internal borders: Nakhichevan Republic and Nagorno-Karabakh. The latter in 1991 the liquidation of November 25 was not recognized as legal, the USSR constitution did not grant such authority to the union republic.
The Minsk Group was created in order for Azerbaijan to fulfill the obligation assumed by the Almaty Declaration, that is, it has an autonomous Nagorno-Karabakh in its composition. This was the main subject of the negotiations on the Nagorno-Karabakh problem, no matter who is going to tell “lolos”. First President Levon Ter-Petrosyan formulated the problem very clearly. “Karabakh has been Armenian for three thousand years and will remain Armenian for three thousand years.” Unlike the national-patriotic forces of Armenia, Ilham Aliyev knows very well that the occupation of Nagorno-Karabakh and the dissolution of statehood contradict Azerbaijan’s international obligations.
When, after the forty-four-day war, the former commander of the Armed Forces Samvel Babayan raised the question of applying to the UN Court of Justice, no one supported him. Meanwhile, he posed a very fundamental problem. Challenge Azerbaijan’s right to dissolve the autonomy of Nagorno-Karabakh in the international court. Even on the basis that the four resolutions of the UN Security Council recognize Nagorno-Karabakh as an administrative territorial unit that is a subject of the right to self-determination.
In this sense, any discourse of delegitimization of the Almaty Declaration works in favor of Azerbaijan, because the legal recognition of the Soviet realities limits Baku not only to claim a territorial or “extraterritorial corridor” to Armenia, but also to solve the Nagorno Karabakh problem once and for all. At the current state of things, of course, it is extremely difficult to achieve such fixations, but at least we can reach an internal Armenian consensus and defend not the preamble of the Armenian constitution, but the Armenian-Azerbaijani settlement based on the legal-political basis of the Almaty Declaration.
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