State Department's declassified archives reveal new details in Karabakh issue
Caliber.Az analysis

ANALYTICS  09 February 2023 - 16:52

A few days ago, the website of the Armenian bureau of Radio Liberty published an article about the declassified documents from the US Department of State archives related to the Karabakh peace process in 1997-1998, i.e. immediately before the resignation of Armenian President Levon Ter-Petrosyan. Caliber.Az has reviewed the declassified materials provided in the article and presents its analysis of these documents.

Before proceeding to the consideration of the documents, it is necessary to outline the geopolitical context of the events described.

After defeating the Soviet Union in the Cold War, the United States became the sole hegemon on the planet by the early 1990s. Relations with its partners, including the co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group, Russia, and France, bear the mark of an indulgent giveaway game. The United States perceives these countries as agents of influence rather than partners. The style of communication with them is assertive, acerbic, and ironic, especially with Russian politicians. The Russians' style is energetically engaged, giving out a willingness to follow instructions for their own initiative. A leitmotif of this very unhealthy relationship can be found in a phrase of prominent Soviet and Russian politician and diplomat Yevgeny Primakov which he uttered while speaking to US Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott: "You know, Brzezinski wrote that we should not take Russia into account. But he is wrong. Russia still plays a role in international affairs."

However, the US is at the pinnacle of power, which means that it can only go downhill from here. Disagreements between the partners are cautiously voiced, and the future rift is already outlined, and this too will be discussed in this article.

The Karabakh issue is often discussed not separately but alongside other topics, including disarmament issues, NATO enlargement, weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, Iran's arms, the Arab-Israeli conflict, and the Yugoslav crisis. There is a divergence of views on almost all of these issues. The United States, for example, unequivocally accuses its Russian partners of arming Iran, while the latter evades a direct answer. The French, in their turn, are making quite transparent attempts to protect Iran from the isolation into which the US wants to plunge the country, and this causes an irritated reaction from the Americans. In other words, there is a Russian-French unison on the Iranian issue.

It is clear, however, that with some temporary leeway of its unqualified influence, the US is forcing the Minsk Group co-chairs to demonstrate their solidarity with an extreme determination to resolve the Karabakh conflict as soon as possible. It was probably important for the US to achieve a resolution of the Karabakh conflict at the peak of its power in order to establish a presence and show its relevance in the post-Soviet space on the borders with its defeated adversary, Russia. Energy integration processes also pushed for this. Washington actively promoted the idea of an oil pipeline alternative to the Russian one to export Azerbaijani and Kazakh oil to the West (the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline which was approved in 1998).

Azerbaijan signed the 'Contract of the Century' in 1994 with a consortium of Western oil companies, thereby incorporating itself into global economic processes and securing development for decades to come. Among other things, international law and four UN Security Council resolutions were on Baku's side. All three co-chair countries understood that time was working for Azerbaijan and tried to save for Armenia the maximum possible - Karabakh's wide autonomy within the neighbouring country. It was as if they foresaw the year 2020.

Looking at the State Department documents, one comes to the conclusion that the sides then understood very well that the reality was as follows: Azerbaijan has nothing to lose, and time is working for it. Accordingly, Azerbaijan is unlikely to accept any document that does not reaffirm its territorial integrity. Armenia, cut off from all integration processes and doomed to rest on the margins of the world economy, suffers the most from the protracted conflict. However, the euphoria of the recent military victory prevents the Armenian public, unlike the ruling elite, from seeing the roots of the future catastrophe. The ruling circles are powerless in the face of both public opinion and the rising Karabakh clan. The Karabakh separatists, for their part, do not want to sign anything that does not stipulate 'independence of Nagorno Karabakh', thus becoming a burden on the shoulders of Armenia the West wants it to be. The co-chairs' irritation with the Karabakh gang is almost undisguised, as is their sympathy for Armenia itself.

Here are two similar quotes - from US Ambassador-at-Large James Collins: "1997 is the year of the decision on gas pipelines and transportation routes. If the Armenian side cannot participate in regional processes, it will cost Armenia dearly and is not in anyone's interest" and Russian Foreign Minister Yevgeny Primakov: "Time is working against Yerevan: while Azerbaijan is getting richer, Armenia is stagnating". Both remarks date back to early 1997.

So, it is time to move on to the documents. We will not, or hardly, duplicate the quotations that the Radio Liberty article has. By correlating the two texts, the reader will easily be able to identify the documents.

The considered dossier starts with the minutes of a meeting between US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and French President Jacques Chirac on February 17, 1997. Chirac mentioned that he had recently met with Azerbaijani President Heydar Aliyev and suggested that he work on an agreement recommending full autonomy with the deployment of international security forces. Albright expressed the view that Ter-Petrosyan would like a Russian presence, but that this would only be possible as part of an international force.

We would like to add that Ter-Petrosyan probably spoke of a willingness to have a Russian military presence under pressure from the Karabakh clan.

It is therefore possible to conclude that the US could not allow a Russian peacekeeping mission to take place. It should be noted that the establishment of the Triple Chairmanship was also intended to take over the sole initiative from the Russian side, which had already succeeded once in the negotiation arena - the signing of an armistice between the sides in 1994.

The documents then refer to a meeting between Strobe Talbott and Ambassador-at-Large Collins and the Armenian Foreign Minister, Alexander Arzumanyan, in Washington on February 28, 1997. Their interesting conversation sheds some light on the position of official Yerevan. Arzumanyan managed to expose the whole spectrum of his position in a single meeting, from presenting himself as a strong party to actually admitting impotence. He began by saying that the bilateral talks had failed and, referring to Nagorno-Karabakh's zealous attitude, proposed a "3+3" format, referring to the three co-chair countries of the OSCE Minsk Group and Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Nagorno-Karabakh as a separate party to the talks. Arzumanyan even suggested that "the Karabakh Armenians, having occupied (emphasis added by the editorial board) so much territory, expect it to be Baku's turn to come up with a settlement initiative before they consider a compromise". The protocol goes on to note that the minister quickly backtracked on Talbott's objection to this. Arzumanyan then sought US aid for the opening of the Armenian-Turkish border, expressing fears that plans for regional transport links would bypass Armenia.

The Armenian diplomat's summary: "...the Russian document (on peaceful settlement) must not be shown immediately to Kocharyan (then head of the self-proclaimed "NKR" - ed.), otherwise he will throw it away". "When working with Karabakh people, it is important not to give them all the details at once, which they will reject, it is better to save them for later," Arzumanyan summed up while stressing that it is best to start with the issue of "NK" security. And at the end of the conversation, Collins utters a phrase about the pressure Ter-Petrosyan expects from the MGs.

All of the above suggests that official Yerevan was ready for significant compromises as early as the beginning of 1997 and saw the position of the Karabakh separatist leaders as the biggest obstacle.

In May 1997, the OSCE Minsk Group's comprehensive settlement plan was presented to Levon Ter-Petrosyan by Strobe Talbott, French diplomat Jacques Blot and Russian diplomat Valentin Lozinsky.

The Minsk Group diplomats prefaced their presentation with a brief and stern introduction: "The document is balanced, requiring concessions from both sides." It was mentioned that during the informal negotiations, the following compromise was discussed: the territorial integrity (of Azerbaijan) in exchange for the status (of Nagorno-Karabakh). Curiously, Ter-Petrosyan interrupted the rapporteurs with the statement that there had been no confidential talks, as one of the sides does not take confidentiality seriously. Which side Ter-Petrosyan had in mind is unknown, but it appears that at the time he simply decided to disassociate himself from such an audacious "subject of discussion". Blot continued the meeting by discussing the principles of territorial integrity, self-determination, the problem of citizenship, and territorial claims. That is, the minutes of the meeting do not clarify what the specific terms of the agreement were, but from the overall context, it can be understood that it was about Karabakh's broad autonomy within Azerbaijan. Although the first settlement option is generally regarded as a package deal, a diplomat's remark reads that 'the status agreement may take longer, therefore the document is divided into two agreements, so that each follows its own algorithm', which in effect makes it closer to a step-by-step option.

It seems that the vagueness of the wording did not suit either side. Not without reason, at Secretary Albright's next meeting with Minister Primakov in Denver in June 1997, the latter complained that "all three sides officially rejected everything".

At the same meeting, he gave the sacramental advice to the states to "do something with Azerbaijan, using oil as leverage". And further: "...you can say that if the case does not work out, you will not encourage your companies to help Azerbaijan in oil production". Russia, according to Primakov, would blackmail Armenia by refusing to supply arms. As for the advice to the Americans, Primakov's portrayal of the situation as wanting the US to lay oil pipelines through Armenian territory at all costs may have played a role here. It is difficult to say on what this confidence was based. Or was it a kind of bluff, a fool's game, and in fact, the diplomat simply sabotaged the instructions of Washington? The question remains open.

Primakov's further remarks do not particularly shed light on the vague character of the "comprehensive settlement": "Armenians stand for Karabakh's full independence. The Azerbaijanis insist on autonomy, but only as part of Azerbaijan. This I call a rigid vertical solution. They deviated from the 21 points that we prepared for them. Ter-Petrosyan told me earlier it was a good basis, but now he backtracked".

The logical question is, what exactly did the Minsk Group propose? What autonomy was it about - de facto independence? It is impossible to understand it from the text of the documents. The impression is that the co-chairs, or to be more precise the US, had a great need to bamboozle the sides with promises and to introduce a peacekeeping contingent to Karabakh.

It is difficult to say now whether Albright heeded her Russian colleague's advice to press Azerbaijan on the oil factor, but Primakov seems to have fulfilled his part of the blackmail perfectly. On September 30, Ter-Petrosyan held a famous conference at which he voiced the need for the Armenian side to make compromises with Azerbaijan. During his next conversation with James Collins on October 8, 1997, Primakov himself praised Ter-Petrosyan's courage and emphasised the Armenian president's theses: "The conflict has no military solution, the status quo is of no benefit to anyone, and Karabakh will neither gain independence nor be annexed to Armenia...".

In the course of the conversation, the American and Russian diplomats voiced a curious unity of opinion on Armenian-Iranian relations. The deputy secretary of state pointed to the problem of external pressure on Ter-Petrosyan: "The topic of Iran is also relevant. The issue of Armenian-Iranian ties has the potential to undermine public support for Armenia in the US". Primakov responded that if the first phase of the Minsk project was adopted, it would undermine (Armenia's) ties with Iran and help lift the blockade of the Turkish border.

Apparently, the autumn of 1997 turned out to be high-keyed, and by October both sides were closer to signing peace than ever before. This is evidenced by Talbott's conversation with Blot on October 15, 1997.

But it did not work. Kocharyan wandered around museums, drank coffee, and still proved faithful to the lofty ideals of "miatsum" by not agreeing to any settlement option that did not include Karabakh's independence.

By the end of the year, the co-chairs' fervour had cooled. On January 14, 1998, Blot, speaking to Collins, lamented that the persuasion of Kocharyan had come to nothing. In the same conversation, there is a rather entertaining episode full of worrying notes and fears of a split in the co-chairmen's ranks.

Collins asked Blot to comment on Russia's unofficial alliance with Armenia. Blot said Russia sees the Karabakh issue in the context of its relations with the US, rather than with Armenia. In his opinion, the Russians believe that the Western strategy in the region is to diminish Russian influence, and therefore they will first seek to strengthen and protect this influence. Blot further asserted that Russia sees the US proposal for an East-West energy corridor (referring above all to the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline project) as a new attempt to isolate it and that this has had a negative impact on the atmosphere inside the MG. But Collins responded that the United States had no intention of excluding Russia and that "the only country we seek to isolate is Iran".

Here the American diplomat is undoubtedly lying. In the absence of a new pipeline, Azerbaijani and Kazakh oil would (as has happened) go through the existing Russian pipes, but not through Iranian ones.

Five days later, on 19 January, Primakov met with Talbott. And this dialogue regarding a Karabakh settlement was far from optimistic.

Talbott: "We agreed that we would support Ter-Petrosyan. We understand that right now there is a real struggle going on between him and Kocharyan.

Primakov: "Yes, I can say that Kocharyan wants to be president of Armenia... The Karabakh Armenians are an obstacle. It has to be accepted and overcome. But what can we do?".

Primakov went on to complain that Stepanakert (Khankendi) was against the package plan and neither Baku nor Stepanakert accepted the phased plan.

Curiously, Talbott leaves Primakov's remark blank and turns the conversation to the Yugoslav theme. Could it be that the Americans really do suspect the hand of the Russians in the Armenian confrontation and therefore demonstratively refuse to discuss the issue further?

It was no secret that revanchist sentiments were rising inside the Russian establishment. The Yeltsin era, notable for its complementarity with the West, was slowly drawing to a close. Who knows if the "patriotic" grouping in the Russian elites had not fed into the insolence of the Karabakh clan and contributed to its rise to power in Armenia for the next twenty years? Ter-Petrosyan was a pro-Western man, interested in the tight integration of his country into regional economic processes. Obviously, this kind of man did not suit the Russian elite. Ter-Petrosyan, after a well-known press conference, published an equally well-known article "War or Peace? Time to think about it", where, in particular, he wrote the following: "Armenia and Karabakh are stronger than ever today, but if the conflict is not resolved, they will weaken immeasurably in a year or two. What we reject today, we will ask for in the future, but we will not receive it." This educational effort infuriated Armenian society and allowed the opposition to increase pressure on the authorities, so Ter-Petrosyan resigned on February 3, 1998. Robert Kocharyan became president (it is noteworthy that the regime change in Russia and Armenia was almost synchronous: the same Primakov, a representative of the "patriotic" wing, became prime minister of Russia in September 1998 with a view to becoming president). But it was still too early to celebrate the final victory. There was a growing awareness in the Armenian political environment of the fatal consequences of the "unshakable course" in the Karabakh issue. It is significant that a hawk in Armenian politics such as the former Defence Minister and then Prime Minister Vazgen Sargsyan was already leaning towards compromise and entered into a political alliance with the former First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Armenian SSR, Karen Demirchyan, who was then the Chairman of the National Assembly of Armenia. In October 1999, both would become victims of a parliamentary shooting. The road for the great Armenian self-deception was now completely cleared. A long era of unlimited rule by the Karabakh clan had begun.

As time went on, the co-chairs' unsophisticated predictions of a stronger Azerbaijan tended to come true, to the surprise of Armenian strategists. It turned out that the whole intelligence of the Karabakh clan was to drag out the negotiation process senselessly and to give power to Nikol Pashinyan just before the storm of 2020.

Thus, formally responsible for the military defeat, Pashinyan is a kind of reincarnation of Ter-Petrosyan in a new turn in Armenian history, after having learned a bitter lesson and severe punishment for hubris. "Ter-Petrosyan-2" most likely wants peace with Azerbaijan, but at the same time does not want to lose power. What's more, he is also worried about his own life. The presentation of archival documents to the public is intended to illuminate for the Armenian audience the broader context of the Karabakh problem and to put Pashinyan out of the crosshairs of popular anger in the run-up to the likely signing of a peace treaty.

Curiously, most of these documents were declassified back in 2020. It was not a sensation at the time. There were only occasional publications on specialised academic websites. It is very likely that Pashinyan's team was aware of the existence of these materials in the public domain and decided to release them to the public before some important event. As noted above, the likely aim is to convey to Armenian society that the peace agreement with Azerbaijan is not a whim of individual political forces, but an imperative of the logic of the historical process.

Caliber.Az