Will the OSCE send an observer mission to Armenia? Technical team arrives
Visit of OSCE Technical Team
Members of the OSCE “needs assessment” group are expected in Armenia on October 21. The organization’s experts are coming to assess the situation on the border between Armenia and Azerbaijan, the scene of recent armed escalation.
On September 13-14 the armed forces of Azerbaijan invaded the sovereign territory of Armenia, which Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan described as “unprovoked and unjustified aggression“. From the UN rostrum he stated that Armenia is determined to defend its independence and territorial integrity, while “the full involvement and support of the international community” is extremely important.
Members of the OSCE team are reportedly coming at the invitation of Yerevan and will spend one week there. It is not yet known whether their visit will be followed by the deployment of an OSCE observation mission on the Armenian-Azerbaijani border, but the Armenian Foreign Minister said that everything would be clear “in the very near future.”
Details of the visit of the OSCE technical group and expert opinion.
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“Assessment of the situation based on OSCE mandate and experience”
This will be the second technical group sent to Armenia to assess the situation on the Armenian-Azerbaijani border; there is already a group from the European Union conducting preparatory work to mark the locations of forty civilian observers of the EU mission.
On October 6 in Prague, during a meeting between the leaders of Armenia, Azerbaijan, France and the head of the European Council, an agreement was reached on the deployment of an EU monitoring mission on the Armenian-Azerbaijani border.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that the CSTO military bloc is also ready to send an observation group to the border between Armenia and Azerbaijan.
The OSCE clarifies that the purpose of the visit is to assess the situation in some border regions of Armenia “based on its mandate and experience.” The group includes both representatives of the OSCE secretariat and international experts.
“The technical team will visit regions along the Armenian-Azerbaijani border and consult with relevant national and local stakeholders and international partners,” the OSCE said in a statement.
“OSCE mission has no mandate” – Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry
Official Baku has already expressed its dissatisfaction with the OSCE technical group’s visit to Armenia. The Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry issued a statement saying:
“Any group called ‘OSCE Needs Assessment Mission in Armenia’ does not have an OSCE mandate, cannot be associated in any way with the OSCE, and none of its results or reports can be accepted as an OSCE document.”
Official Baku explains that “the issue of sending the ‘OSCE Needs Assessment Mission to Armenia’ has never been discussed by any collective decision-making body of the OSCE, and as a result, no decision has been made on this issue.”
Moreover, the Azerbaijani authorities believe that “the ill-considered unilateral action of the OSCE chairmanship and secretariat is contrary to the basic principles of any responsible and credible mediation and confidence building, which require, among other things, the consent of the parties.”
Commentary
Political scientist Suren Surenyants finds it difficult to say whether an OSCE observation mission will be sent to Armenia after the completion of the technical group’s activities. He says “a possible political decision will become clear” after a week.
In his opinion, if such a decision is made the missions of the European Union and the OSCE can complement each other.
Surenyants believes that Baku will not let the OSCE observers into the country, as it did in the case of the EU mission, and with which it agreed to cooperate “to the extent that it will concern Azerbaijan.”
Surenyants approves of the mission but cautions that one should have “high expectations” of them:
“In the end they are just arbitrators, by and large they cannot prevent escalation unless political or diplomatic solutions are found.”
According to Surenyants, the monitoring groups are an instrument of political pressure, but cannot fulfill the function of containing Azerbaijan.
“If someone wants to contain Azerbaijan, there are two options for this: military intervention and economic sanctions. I think the first won’t happen, and even with regard to the second, the West is not particularly in a hurry because there are certain interests associated with Azerbaijan,” he opined.
According to Surenyants, it is obvious that targeted assessments and statements will not stop Baku either, since even now when the EU technical group is working on the border, “Azerbaijan violates the ceasefire every day and provides information background for a possible new escalation.”
Visit of OSCE Technical Team
