Recently, in response to the question of “Deutsche Welle” international broadcaster, President Sargsyan has said that Armenia has never been against the presence of peacekeepers in Karabakh, however,… In Armenia, what comes after this “however” is neglected, and the rest are understanding as follows: allegedly tomorrow or the day after tomorrow, the United Nations is going to deploy peacekeepers in the Karabakh-Azerbaijani border. The Republicans without giving a turn to each other began to glorify this brilliant idea, some of the opponents declared that it was a conspiracy against the Armenian people. The reality, however, is different.
In 1994, at the OSCE Summit in Budapest, a decision was made to establish a High-Level Planning Group with an open-end mandate. The Group, in particular, had to present the OSCE Chairman-in-office a number of recommendations about the number of the OSCE multinational peacekeeping forces in Karabakh, the structure, HQ, logistics and so on. But this is only in the case if the parties accept any option of presumed peacekeepers. This does not mean, however, that the peacekeepers will arrive in the region on Monday. As they have not arrived for 22 years so as they might not arrive for another 22 years. Anyway, the aforementioned decision has the signatures of Armenia and Azerbaijan underneath as the decisions in such summits are adopted by a consensus. German journalist’s question to the RA President was purely theoretical and the answer was also theoretical, all RA authorities must respect their signature.
Deployment of peacekeepers at this moment will mean creating an additional tension in Artsakh. Do not be surprised, this is true. In Lebanon, Rwanda and former Yugoslavia, the peacekeepers failed to prevent the violence, particularly, the peacekeeping forces failed to prevent the Bosnian Serbs to massacre Muslims in Srebrenica, or the Albanians to massacre and displace Serbs from Kosovo. The peacekeepers, willy-nilly, present the interests of their countries.
The deployment of peacekeepers would be meaningful when Artsakh will have the status of an independent state and its sovereignty guaranteeing states, even the same Minsk Group co-chair countries, will form peacekeeping units to defend the Artsakh borders from infringements. The latest events showed that less status than independence would mean a terrible bloodshed with neighboring ethnos typical methods.
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So far, the best peacekeepers are our soldiers.
Aram ABRAHAMYAN
