Armenia's dreams of UN mission in Karabakh fated to fail
Just like four resolutions remain on paper

ANALYTICS  27 February 2023 - 10:20

The Armenian government keeps pursuing the absurd idea of having a UN mission in Karabakh, which Yerevan has often discussed. The other day, Nikol Pashinyan and UN Secretary-General António Guterres even discussed some details of the possible dispatch of international envoys, who would be engaged in the collection of facts on everything that happens in Karabakh and particularly on the Lachin road by phone (!?).

It is an obvious fact that Pashinyan is probing the ground for another venture in the form of sending a UN mission to Karabakh. But the irony is that Armenia, counting today on the assistance of the UN, has for 27 years cynically ignored four resolutions of the UN Security Council, demanding immediate and unconditional release of the occupied territories of Azerbaijan - all of them remained on paper, without receiving even minimal implementation. The status quo of the three-decades-old occupation has been broken by Azerbaijan alone, solving the problem of the occupied territories by military means.

As to Yerevan's nascent plan to possibly send a UN mission to Karabakh, Pashinyan has been inspired from abroad, according to a statement by French MP and former European affairs minister Nathalie Loiseau, who is known for her strongly pro-Armenian stance. In a recent interview with CivilNet, the French parliamentarian supported the idea of a "UN agency presence in Karabakh and the Lachin corridor".

"I would like to see a fact-finding mission sent to the Lachin corridor as a matter of urgency. It would be the role of the UN Security Council to go, see and declare. In that case, there is no need to give up the prospect of a resolution in the UNSC," said Loiseau.

She also excitedly announced some time ago that France would send gendarmes as part of the EU mission to be stationed along the conditional border between Azerbaijan and Armenia, stating that it would also strongly support a more extended and larger European delegation to the region.

However, Yerevan, too trusting in the support and assistance of Western patrons, apparently does not take into account important nuances. The most important one is that Azerbaijan will not allow the UN mission to enter its territory, which would by no means contradict international law. Baku's irrefutable argument for this is that Karabakh is an internal affair of Azerbaijan, as it is an internationally recognised Azerbaijani territory. And this is confirmed, among others, by four resolutions of the UN Security Council, ignored by Armenia in its time. So the Armenian side's far-reaching plans to replace the RPC with the UN mission in Karabakh are not fated to take place.

Obviously, the Armenian idea of sending UN officials to Karabakh will displease Russia too. Moscow is already extremely irritated by the arrival of the new EU mission in Armenia, as evidenced by several harsh messages from the Russian Foreign Ministry to the leadership in Yerevan. There are therefore good reasons to believe that the new Armenian folly may bring Yerevan far from positive surprises from the Kremlin.

Incidentally, earlier this year Moscow had already expressed its official position on the possibility of placing UN peacekeepers in Karabakh. Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov said then that "the deployment of a UN peacekeeping mission in Karabakh is possible only if the parties to the conflict agree to it," making it clear to Armenia that this plan was far from reality.

At the same time, back in December last year, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova at a briefing gave a tough response to Pashinyan's statements earlier at a government meeting that if Russia cannot ensure security and stability in Karabakh for objective or subjective reasons, it should initiate discussion in the UN Security Council about sending an additional multinational peacekeeping contingent to Karabakh. Zakharova responded by saying that to say such things is to misunderstand the realities on the ground. However, the one-sided policy pursued by the Armenian authorities leaves no doubt that official Yerevan will try, with the support of its Western backers, to spite everything and keep promoting its irrational ideas in the region, but the rhetorical question is what Armenia's destructive policy will lead to. Although it is obvious that dreams of a UN mission in Karabakh seem quite realistic to Armenia. But, as they say, dreaming never hurts.

Caliber.Az