Fifteen years after Armenia and Azerbaijan signed a ceasefire in their conflict over the Nagorny Karabakh region, the enclave remains a powderkeg in the strategically important South Caucasus. Despite internationally mediated talks inching forward, analysts say a long-term solution remains distant.
Meanwhile the unresolved conflict and the threat of a new war are casting shadows over attempts to diversify European energy supplies and over US-backed efforts to reconcile Armenia and Turkey. "Despite mediators' optimism about a possible breakthrough, there is a long-running stalemate on several issues," the International Crisis Group wrote in a report last month.
"The real risk of renewed conflict continues to threaten Caucasus stability and international access to Caspian energy," the Brussels-based think tank said.
Backed by Armenia, ethnic Armenian separatists seized control of Nagorny Karabakh from Azerbaijan in the early 1990s in a war that killed nearly 30,000 people and forced two million to flee their homes. A ceasefire was signed between the two former Soviet republics on May 12, 1994 but the dispute is far from resolved.
Armenian and Azerbaijani forces are spread across a tense ceasefire line and shootings are common. At least six people were killed in the first three months of this year on or near the frontline. Azerbaijan, which has vowed to retake control of the region by force if necessary, is the hub for a Western-backed corridor of energy pipelines delivering oil and gas from the Caspian Sea to Europe, bypassing Russia.
Analysts say a fresh conflict over Karabakh would jeopardise supplies and scuttle ambitious plans to further expand the energy network into Central Asia. The Karabakh dispute also threatens to derail efforts to reconcile Armenia and Turkey. Baku has called for Ankara to make the Karabakh dispute a key issue in talks with Armenia and has reportedly warned it could cut off gas supplies to Turkey.
A recent upsurge in negotiations over Karabakh has raised some hopes of progress. International mediators said last week that "important and significant progress" had been made during talks in Prague between Armenian President Serzh Sarkisian and his Azerbaijani counterpart Ilham Aliyev. More talks are expected to take place in Saint Petersburg in early June.
But the Minsk Group of international mediators admits that even after more than a decade, negotiations are still focused on simply establishing the "basic principles" for resolving the conflict, not on taking concrete steps.
Analysts in both countries say there is no doubt that some headway has been made, however small. "There has been progress in the negotiations and the settlement of the conflict has moved beyond the zero point," Azerbaijani political analyst Mubariz Akhmedoglu said.
"The fact that there is a negotiating process at all is progress," said Armenian analyst Alexander Iskandarian.
But as last summer's war between Russia and Georgia over the rebel South Ossetia region showed, there is always a danger that seemingly frozen conflicts in the South Caucasus will flare up, they said. "As long as the process drags on there is always a chance of a new war breaking out," Akhmedoglu said.
Iskandarian said the threat of a new conflict appears low for now, especially as both Armenia and Azerbaijan are struggling economically due to the global economic slump. "But no one can exclude the possible renewal of military actions in the next few years," he said.
AFP
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