PACE rapporteur says Nagorno-Karabakh remains 'Gospel truth' that overshadows Azerbaijan politics

The co-author of a report calling for widespread political and judicial reforms in Azerbaijan has told national parliamentarians that the Nagorno-Karabakh “occupation” remains the “gospel truth” that overshadows everything else in the nation, including political decision-making and the reform process.

Polish MP Tadeusz Iwinski (pictured) was a co-rapporteur for the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), along with Spain’s Pedro Agramunt, given the task of examining the nation’s democratic institutions ahead of the November parliamentary elections.

Both men wrote of the “complex geopolitical context in Azerbaijan” and fought off attempts from the floor of the assembly to remove from the 23-page document all references to the conflict during a debate at the PACE summer session in Strasbourg earlier this week.

“The war over Nagorno-Karabakh that started in 1992 resulted in the occupation of 20 percent of Azerbaijani territory with more than one million IDPs,” he said after the session.

“The issue of Nagorno-Karabakh overshadows everything (in Azerbaijan)”.

The report is critical of the pace of legal, political and electoral reform in Azerbaijan but Iwinski argued to remove all reference to Nagorno-Karabakh from the 23-page document would have been a failure to acknowledge the “complex geopolitical context of Azerbaijan”.

Ahead of the election, the report made it clear that Azerbaijan has much more to do in terms of legal, political and electoral reform if it is to comply with the Venice Commission.

Speaking after the session PACE delegate and Azerbaijani MP Elkhan Suleymanov said: “The rapporteurs’ report is realistic about the political development of a nation with less than 25 years of democratic history after seven decades of Soviet rule.”

“To have removed all references to an occupation that to this day blights the lives of so many people would have been an injustice in itself.”

Officially, the international community pins its hopes of ending the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict on the OSCE Minsk group but Iwinski was dismissive of its chances after two decades of trying to make peace.

The Minsk Group is the main international format advancing a peaceful solution to the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict.

“It’s ridiculous because more than 20 years has elapsed and this (unresolved conflict) is the status quo,” said Suleymanov.

In his view that means Nagorno-Karabakh will continue to cast its shadow over Azerbaijani politics and society for years to come.

Nagorno-Karabakh has been described as one of the so called ”frozen conflicts”  in Europe which still remains unresolved to this day.

Fighting broke out in the late 1980s during the final days of the Soviet Union, with ethnic Armenians taking control of Nagorno-Karabakh and a land corridor linking it to Armenia.

But this tiny, mountainous region is still the subject of a bitter dispute between Armenia and Azerbaijan, years after the ceasefire. Armenian forces won the war and now control Nagorno-Karabakh, after the Azeri population fled and years of negotiations have failed to deliver a peace deal.

Azerbaijan says Nagorno-Karabakh must not be allowed to break away.

But a spokesman for the Armenian Mission to the European Union told this website that the region has the right to choose its own destiny.

Parliamentary elections will be held in Azerbaijan on either 1 or 8. Baku has invited an observer delegation from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) and has promised a “free and fair poll”.

PACE secretary general Thorbjørn Jagland touched upon the Nagorno Karabakh conflict in this week´s Strasbourg session and mentioned that the OSCE Minsk Group is engaged in this issue.

He said: “We all know this issue is complicated and sensitive. The situation related to Azerbaijan depends on OSCE Minsk Group. We have not mandate in this regard, don’t attend the negotiations. I’m closely and regularly following the question you raised. It’s true, there is no result and this is explained with the difficulty of the situation. And you know it better than me.”

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