security and human rights 27 (2016) 422-441 brill.com/shrs osce and the Nagorno-Karabakh Peace Process Carey Cavanaugh us Ambassador (retired); Professor of Diplomacy and Conflict Resolution, University of Kentucky’s Patterson School; Executive-in-Residence, Geneva Centre for Security Policy Abstract The Minsk Process for Nagorno-Karabakh has directed unprecedented engagement from key world powers on this decades-old dispute. osce’s first peacemaking effort survived a rocky start, evolving into a functional multi-faceted conflict management instrument. While the envisioned “Minsk Conference” was never held, not one of the myriad peace proposals adopted, no status determination for Nagorno-Karabakh ever made, and no refugees or lands returned, the Minsk Process may still be considered a success. Frequent criticism notwithstanding, it has kept Armenia and Azerbaijan engaged in a near continuous diplomatic dialogue, restrained large-scale fighting, and belied fears of a significant regional conflagration. That is a noteworthy achievement. Keywords osce – Nagorno-Karabakh – conflict – mediation – Minsk Group – Armenia – Azerbaijan osce and the Nagorno-Karabakh Peace Process Context On the tenth day of his presidency George W. Bush received a telephone call from French President Jacques Chirac to convey congratulations and to brief him on an important topic: Nagorno-Karabakh. Chirac had already coordinated with Russian President Vladimir Putin on this dispute a week before Bush * From 1999–2001, Carey Cavanaugh was the us Special Negotiator for Eurasian Conflicts and osce Minsk Group Co-Chair, and led the Key West Peace Talks on Nagorno-Karabakh. © nhc, 2017 | doi 10.1163/18750230-02703001 Downloaded from Brill.com10/03/2021 12:06:38AM via free access <UN> Osce And The Nagorno-karabakh Peace Process 423 formally took office. Furthermore, Bush and Putin had spoken by phone just 1 day earlier, touching on several key issues and noting the importance of developing us-Russian cooperation to facilitate solutions to global problems. Chirac had met on 26 January 2001 in Paris at the Elysée Palace with Armenian President Robert Kocharyan and Azerbaijan President Heydar Ali- yev following the admission of both states the day before to the Council of Europe where they reaffirmed their commitment to make every effort to find a peaceful solution to the dispute over the Nagorno-Karabakh region. Chirac’s talks in Paris were building directly upon work that the osce Minsk Group Co-Chairs – France, Russia, and the United States – had been advancing for almost 2 years. A settlement proposal, in fact, that had emerged from a direct dialogue between the Armenian and Azerbaijan presidents. Chirac and Putin believed that these discussions had signaled a potential path forward and the French president conveyed to Bush the latest state of play and his strategy. Kocharyan would be back in France for a formal state visit on 12 February, and Chirac would have both Aliyev and Kocharyan in Paris on 5 March to continue the Nagorno-Karabakh discussion. Putin had already engaged the Armenian and Azerbaijan leaders in Moscow, had met with Aliyev in Baku in January to push the current efforts forward, and would huddle with Chirac in Stockholm on 23 March on this and other matters. It was now the United States’ turn to take the diplomatic lead. In the tenth week of Bush’s presidency, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe’s (osce) peace talks took place at former us President Harry S Truman’s Little White House in Key West, Florida. As one of his first major acts, the new us Secretary of State Colin Powell directly promoted a N agorno-Karabakh settlement, opening the Key West Peace Talks on 2 April with Presidents Ali- yev and Kocharyan, plus the Minsk Group Co-Chairs, seated around Truman’s personal poker table. Once the talks concluded, both presidents flew to Washington, d.c. to meet separately with President Bush in the White House. The remarkable pace of exchanges and actions detailed above underscores the significant role the osce has played during the conflict between Arme- nia and Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh through its Minsk Process.1 These mediation efforts have garnered unprecedented high-level engagement by the 1 References to the osce Minsk Process for Nagorno-Karabakh have been muddled by the emergence in 2014 of a new 3-party “Minsk Process” – the Trilateral Contact Group on Ukraine – which includes osce, Russia and Ukraine. Talks under this format led to the September 2014 signing of the “Minsk Protocol”, implementing a ceasefire in Ukraine’s Don- bass region. Since then, there have been multiple rounds of “Minsk peace negotiations” that have included representatives of the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Lugansk People’s security and human rights 27 (2016) 422-441 Downloaded from Brill.com10/03/2021 12:06:38AM via free access <UN> 424 Cavanaugh presidents and foreign ministers (or us Secretaries of State) of France, Russia and the United States, as well as countless European prime ministers and for- eign ministers. What was evident in April 2001 as the conflicting parties approached peace remained just as true in April 2016 as an outbreak of fighting along the Line of Contact that separates Azerbaijan and Nagorno-Karabakh threatened war.2 These hostilities instantly engendered a flurry of diplomatic activity. In r apid succession, French President Francois Hollande, Putin, us Vice President Joseph Biden, plus their foreign ministers, the Minsk Group Co-Chair ambas- sadors, osce Chairperson-in-Office (CiO) and German Foreign Minister Frank- Walter Steinmeier, and other key players quickly used meetings in Washington, Moscow, Vienna, and the region, to engage with Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan, Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev, and key counterparts, to commu- nicate both privately and publicly that peace must be restored. Prompt action by Russia included summoning the chiefs of the Armed Forces General Staff of Azerbaijan and Armenia to Moscow to restore the ceasefire. For almost 25 years such dialogue and engagement has been almost com- monplace, indicative of the importance attached to managing this conflict and the preparedness of the osce’s participating States and the institution itself to provide and facilitate a peace process that might resolve this longstand- ing dispute. Nagorno-Karabakh remains today a “not-so-frozen conflict” that continues to threaten stability and impede economic growth in the broader Caucasus region. Introduction The aim of this article is to describe and analyze the convoluted evolution and development of the osce Minsk Process, its emergence as a multi-faceted conflict management instrument, as well as its merits today as a mechanism for mediating a peaceful resolution of this dispute. The history and origins of Republics, as well as the February 2015 “Minsk Agreements” brokered under the Normandy Format (Russia, Germany, France and Ukraine). 2 The fighting that erupted on 2 April 2016 (the 15th anniversary of the osce Key West Peace Talks) represented the greatest loss of life in this conflict since a durable ceasefire was first established in May 1994. Well over 100 civilians and military personnel were killed, with estimates as high as 350 casualties. See “Background Briefing on Nagorno-Karabakh Conflict,” us Department of State, Vienna, Austria, 16 May 2016 (http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ prs/ps/2016/05/257263.html). security and humanDownloaded rights from 27 Brill.com10/03/2021 (2016) 422-441 12:06:38AM via free access <UN> Osce And The Nagorno-karabakh Peace Process 425 the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict have been well-documented elsewhere and are beyond the intended scope of this article.3 The analysis elaborated below is focused instead on the mediation process itself. It details how the structure and mandate of the 5 components of the current Minsk Process is quite different from what was originally planned, highlighting that the evolution has brought strengths that have served osce well. In particular, greater cooperation be- tween Russia and the United States, and the strong coordinated involvement of the leadership of those 2 powers, plus France and many other European states, to maintain peace between Armenia and Azerbaijan and promote a settlement to the longstanding dispute over Nagorno-Karabakh. In so doing, the analysis will also probe why the osce Minsk Process has proven more effective at conflict management than conflict resolution. The manifest reasons for this are threefold: (1) the dispute is centered upon 2 com- peting and largely irreconcilable international principles: respect for territo- rial integrity and the right of ethnic minorities to self-determination; (2) the inability of a consensus organisation like the osce to impose a solution on participating States; and (3) the limited political will of the parties to make the necessary hard compromises to resolve the conflict. Given that mise-en-scène, the historical developments that led to the current Minsk Process – not sur- prisingly – fostered a powerful “tool kit” that advances prospective settlements that may only be achieved if embraced by the conflicting parties, but can in- dependently apply significant pressure to dampen the potential for further military action. The article will conclude with a brief examination of whether other mediating parties, individual states or international institutions, might better promote a definitive settlement, as well as the troubling impact of the April 2016 fighting on the