The United States, Russia and France, which are the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs, can contribute much to bringing about peace to Nagorno-Karabakh, but the will of the warring sides is vital, Carey Cavanaugh, a former US special negotiator for Eurasian conflicts, told Sputnik
WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 02nd October, 2020) The United States, Russia and France, which are the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs, can contribute much to bringing about peace to Nagorno-Karabakh, but the will of the warring sides is vital, Carey Cavanaugh, a former US special negotiator for Eurasian conflicts, told Sputnik.
On Thursday, the leaders of Russia, the US and France in a joint statement called for an immediate cessation of hostilities in Nagorno-Karabakh and for Armenia and Azerbaijan to resume negotiations without preconditions. The hostilities in Azerbaijan's Armenian-dominated breakaway region erupted on Sunday when both parties accused each other of violating the ceasefire.
"I think they [OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs] can do a lot ... I think we have seen in the past working together this diplomatic mechanism that was set up to work on the Nagorno-Karabakh has the potential to help bring about peace," Cavanaugh said.
The three countries, however, cannot force Armenia and Azerbaijan to accept each other's conditions, but should work together to "craft a compromise solution that will be acceptable to both parties," according to the ex-official.
Cavanaugh recalled that the sides came "pretty close" to resolving the conflict during the Key West peace talks in the US in 2001, in which he was personally involved, but finally failed to reach an agreement.
The diplomat believes that the problem was that the populations of Armenia and Azerbaijan were not ready to accept the solutions, and the leaders did not make it clear enough how that is supposed to work.
The former special negotiator declined to answer whom he considers responsible for unleashing the current escalation and agreed that it is far more important who will be the first to sit down at the negotiating table.
The OSCE Minsk Group was created in 1992 to facilitate a peaceful resolution to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. Against the backdrop of the new escalation, Azerbaijan and Turkey have been critical of the group's failure to advance peace in the region for nearly 30 years and its allegedly insufficient pressure on Armenia.
