Paul Goble
Staunton, June 5 – Three weeks ago, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev said that the OSCE’s Minsk Group which has existed since 1992 to provide international assistance in resolving the Karabakh dispute should be disbanded because that conflict between his country and Armenia no longer exists and that Yerevan should join Baku in calling for its end.
But three Armenian commentators say that Yerevan must not do so as the conflict has not been finally resolved, the West cares very much about this format and Yerevan would lose its support if the group were disbanded, and the region needs the support of the OSCE to defend human rights (kavkaz-uzel.eu/articles/400724).
And the head of Armenia’s National Assembly, Alen Simonyan, says that Aliyev’s proposal is premature and that discussions about what the future of the OSCE Minsk Group should be should take place only after Yerevan and Baku conclude a peace treaty (armenpress.am/en/article/1139054).
International organizations, even prominent ones, often live on after the situation they were created to address: the League of Nations, to cite the most prominent example, had its last meeting after World War II, the conflict that that body had been created at least in part to prevent from breaking out.
Consequently, it seems likely that the OSCE Minsk Group will continue to exist at least until the signing of a peace treaty between Baku and Yerevan and could last for some time even after that. Precisely what it will do if Baku insists that the purposes for which that body was created no longer are relevant, however, remains very unclear.
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