Will France appeal to UN Security Council on NK issue? Comment from Yerevan
France to submit resolution to UNSC on NK
France intends to submit to the UN Security Council a resolution on “providing assistance to 120 thousand residents of Nagorno-Karabakh, who are on the verge of starvation because of the blockade by Azerbaijan. This was reported by the French publication Le Figaro.
In the opinion of political observer Hakob Badalyan, even if this information is reliable, it should not only be welcomed but also “soberly assessed”. It reminds that late last year France submitted a draft statement on the same issue to the Security Council, but the document was not adopted.
The UN Security Council discussed the issue for the first time on December 20, 2022. The overwhelming majority of the council members called on Azerbaijan to lift the blockade. However, the Security Council did not adopt any document.
On August 17, another meeting of the Security Council was held on the same issue, this time at the initiative of Armenia. Representatives of 15 member states of the Security Council, as well as Armenia, Azerbaijan and Turkey took the floor. No resolution or statement was adopted at this meeting either.
“The lives of 120,000 people are in the hands of the UN Security Council?”
Le Figaro will not disclose the details of France’s appeal to the UN Security Council. But the same article reports that next week Paris and major regions of France will again send a humanitarian aid convoy to Armenia. France has recently already made a similar initiative to help NK.
A humanitarian cargo from that country joined the convoy of trucks with aid provided by the Armenian government. All the vehicles are still waiting for Azerbaijani permission at the entrance to the Lachin corridor, near the Armenian village of Kornidzor. Baku does not allow them to pass into MK territory.
The French publication also touched upon the situation in unrecognized NKR after the Lachin corridor was blocked on December 12, 2022:
“After Azerbaijan blocked the only road connecting Nagorno-Karabakh with Armenia, the local Armenian population is regularly subjected to hardships, being deprived of food, medicine, gas, electricity and fuel.”
Commentary
Political observer Hakob Badalyan says it is unclear whether Paris’ next appeal is its own initiative or Yerevan’s request. In any case, he has no doubt that “lessons should be learned from the previous precedent with the unaccepted statement”.
Badalyan recalls that the document was not adopted due to the disagreement of several member states of the Security Council. The key role in this was played by Russia’s position, which “failed the statement.”
“And the reason for the disagreement was the following: Russia was not satisfied with the fact that the text did not specifically mention the trilateral statement of November 9 [2020, which ended hostilities in Karabakh], and Russia’s essential role arising from it,” he said.
According to the observer, Armenia and NK need a political and diplomatic result, not another excuse to “rip the mask off Russia’s face.”
According to him, if any initiative leads only to “exposing Russia,” it is more likely to be a result for the participants of the conflict with Russia than for Armenia and unrecognized NKR, which “are in an unequal struggle with Baku.”
“It is precisely to neutralize the catastrophic military-political and humanitarian risks of this conflict [Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh] that the active participation and support of international players is expected.”
He says that by submitting the draft resolution to the UNSC, France will need to do some preliminary work among at least five of its permanent members to form “a sufficiently high bar of probability of the document’s adoption.”
“Otherwise, this initiative will willy-nilly turn into another episode of clarification of relations between the members of the permanent five of the UN [permanent members of the UNSC – France, the US, Russia, China and the UK]. This will not only bring no practical benefit to Armenia and Artsakh, but may also become a pretext for new aggression on the part of Azerbaijan. This cannot be allowed,” he concluded.
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France to submit resolution to UNSC on NK
