In Munich, the OSCE Chairman-in-Office, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, European Affairs and Trade of Malta Jan Borg initiated a meeting with the President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev, during which the latter raised the budget funds of the structure to be used for more relevant purposes than the OSCE Minsk Group, the Personal Representative of the Acting President and the High Planning costs on committee retention is the question. Aliyev stated that “the Karabakh issue has been resolved, and the Armenian-Azerbaijani negotiations are bilateral”.
Apparently, Baku suspended the payment of the annual membership fee to the OSCE, and the Acting President tried to understand the reason. In the OSCE, decisions are made by consensus, this is how the Minsk Group was formed, co-chairs were elected with the consent of all member states, a personal representative of the Acting President was appointed, and a High Planning Committee was created.
These decisions can be changed only with the consent of all OSCE member states. And it is necessary to prepare from today for a situation when Aliyev will propose a new precondition for the continuation of negotiations: to dissolve the OSCE Minsk Group, the co-chairmanship institute, the position of the personal representative of the Acting President and the High Planning Committee. As long as these institutions are functioning, Aliyev’s statement that “the Karabakh issue is resolved” has no legal force and international legitimacy.
Of course, the OSCE currently does not have the weight to practically actualize the Nagorno Karabakh problem, but it is the successor of the CSCE, which was established in 1975. adopted the Helsinki Final Act. And the latter defines the principles of conflict settlement, the exclusion of force or the threat of force, territorial integrity, equality of peoples and the right to self-determination. These principles are the basis of the Nagorno Karabakh settlement negotiation process.
No one knows what world order will be established tomorrow, including Ilham Aliyev. It is possible that the OSCE will turn into another structure. Perhaps, with the calculation of that perspective, he is trying to formulate the actual situation legally, to achieve the dissolution of the institutions formed by the OSCE on the Nagorno-Karabakh problem. Russia, one of the co-chair countries of the OSCE Minsk Group, is trying to return the Armenian-Azerbaijani negotiations to the basis of the Declaration of November 9. Armenia claims that the principles of relations regulation were agreed in Prague.
It is not known how Aliyev’s proposal was accepted by the acting chairman of the OSCE or how the co-chair countries USA and France view this issue. The dissolution of the Minsk Group and its co-chairmanship formally deprives them of the authority to mediate the Armenian-Azerbaijani settlement. Of course, this will also apply to Russia, but Moscow is on the ground here in Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh, and Turkey, a member of the Minsk Group, is in Azerbaijan.
If Azerbaijan sets the issue of convening an OSCE ministerial summit, will the USA, France and Russia agree? Can Armenia work with one of the co-chair countries in such a way that the latter applies a veto to the discussions on the dissolution of the institutions formed by the OSCE on the Nagorno-Karabakh issue? Aliyev raised an extremely delicate topic. The High Planning Committee has been dealing with troop withdrawal mapping for a long time. It also affects the Armenia-Azerbaijan demarcation. Apparently, these working maps contradict Aliyev’s ideas about the border.
