Wednesday, May 18 2016 08:11

Sabine Freizer, senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, is convinced that the meeting between the presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan, mediated by the foreign ministers of the US, Russia and France was urgently needed to reinforce the ceasefire and restore a sense of stability and calm along the line of contact.

When sharing her views on the outcome of the 16 May meeting between the presidents of Azerbaijan and Armenia, Sabine Freizer says in an exclusive interview to Azeri Daily: "The four day war in and around Nagorno-Karabakh was a significant escalation in fighting, and was particularly worrisome due to the number of persons killed and the material damage inflicted. In terms of scale and casualties, the 2-6 April violence clearly exceeded all previous skirmishes since the ceasefire of 12 May 1994. The April events show that any attempt to regain territory militarily will cause massive human losses."

"While the President of Azerbaijan has over the years made it clear that Azerbaijan has the right to use force to regain territory, the April events support predications done by the International Crisis Group and others, that any military offensive is likely to quickly spiral into a circle of intensive violence and cause significant casualties. There can be no quick easy military solution to this conflict," she said. 

"This is the first meeting of the two Presidents since 19 December 2015 when they met in Bern. Before that they had not met since 2014," she says, noting that therefore the May 16 meeting was extraordinary and was called by the co-chair countries to reduce tensions and to re-affirm support for the ceasefire. "It was quite remarkable that the foreign ministers of France, Russia and the US mediated the meeting, and demonstrates how important they consider the return to the ceasefire to be," says Freizer.
As the American analyst thinks, the meeting between the presidents clearly focused on strengthening the ceasefire and avoiding another resumption of intense fighting as was seen in April.
"That is why the points agreed to 'finalize in the shortest possible time an OSCE investigative mechanism [and] to the expansion of the existing Office of the Personal Representative of the OSCE Chairperson in Office.' Both of these points are very important. A stronger OSCE investigative capacity, as for example exists in the context of the Georgian conflict, is essential so that when fighting starts it can quickly become clear who started it, how intensive the exchange of fire is, and ideally for what aim. On 2-6 April for example each side was blaming the other but it was extremely difficult to determine which side was at fault for what. That uncertainty tends to lead to an increase in fighting," believes Freizer.

In Sabine Freizer's opinion, for years organizations and activists studying the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict have been advocating for the strengthening of the Office of the Personal Representative of the OSCE Chairperson in Office.
"Currently with only 6 monitors there is very little that it can do along the very long line of contact and border between Armenia and Azerbaijan. Any increase in the OSCE staff is therefore positive for peace keeping," she says, noting that while the meeting succeeded in dealing with the direct consequence of the 2-4 April fighting, i.e. the insecurity along the LoC, based on the OSCE statement published last night there is little evidence that it addressed the root causes of the conflict or found a new path towards securing a resolution. 

"Co-chairs have for several years expressed strong interest to have Azerbaijan and Armenia begin discussing a comprehensive settlement. However, since 2005 the sides have been talking about the basic principles that should lay the groundwork for more comprehensive discussions. Armenia in particular has insisted on agreement on the principle that Nagorno-Karabakh can declare independence before moving to comprehensive talks. But apparently yesterday Armenia agreed to move to comprehensive talks. This is key because only talks on a full range of issues regarding Nagorno-Karabakh, including its status and the occupied territory, can bring a solution and sustainable peace. As the April events showed, it is imperative that the sides and the mediating countries re-engage in peace talks to avoid all-out war," says Sabine Freizer.