Azerbaijan did not resolve to demand the project to be put to the vote, realizing that this edition of the resolution would not be accepted. Though Ilham Aliev had promised that in any case official Baku would not be contented with the consideration and would insist on the adoption of the suggested project, he did not keep his word given to the journalists. Considering the chances, Azerbaijan has accepted the inevitable of moving some important amendments in the text. The chairman announced that it was necessary to work on the resolution text and closed the meeting without specifying the date when the document is to be put to the vote. The representative of Azerbaijan did not contradict.
In fact happened exactly what Vardan Oskanyan said. On the eve of the consideration the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Armenia showed the readiness of official Yerevan to take part in the working out the compromising variant of the resolution. Oskanyan declared that Armenia would not have anything against the fact that the document might contain the initiative of creating an expert group within the OSCE which would be empowered to investigate the real situation in the region of security zone. It is important to note that a resolution containing such appeal will not call the competence of Minsk Group into question. It is a question of vital importance for us. Azerbaijan presses towards getting new intermediaries to the settlement in order to destroy the negotiation base created due to the efforts of the Minsk Group co-Chairs.
At the General Assembly Meeting Armenia succeeded in a very important point. Armenia could bar the adoption of unilateral document which was based on information got from unreliable sources. It will be possible to speak about a substantial diplomatic success of Yerevan in case if the final edition of the resolution contains not the appraisal but only the call for inspection of the situation in the area. The visit of such fact-finding mission to the region may be even beneficial for Armenia. The inspection will allow proving the fact of occupation of the regions in the Northern part of Karabakh and the fact of ethnic purge carried out in those regions.
The countries which have the key role in the UN marginally stood against the initiative of Azerbaijan even on the first stage of the consideration. At the Meeting of General Assembly the USA and Russia gave to understand that Azerbaijan has to express its concern to the OSCE not to the UN. Of course the Great Powers didn’t support Azerbaijan not because they support Armenia. They are just not interested in involving the UN in a process which is easier to control within the OSCE Minsk Group. However, if we judge by absolute numbers, it is obvious that the number of countries supporting Azerbaijan in the UN decreases every year.
Among the big countries only Turkey and Pakistan support Azerbaijan. Pakistan for the present moment remains a member of the Security Council. And the World Powers oppose the Azerbaijan’s attempts to involve the UN in the process of the settlement of Karabakh conflict. This time the initiative of Baku was not supported not only by the co-Chairs of Minsk Group, but also by other permanent members of the Security Council, also all the countries of the EU and even some countries of GUAM and the Organisation of Islamic Conference. For Baku the denial of support from China and Georgia was amiss. For Armenia it was a considerable diplomatic success. Formerly Peking and Tbilisi during any voting on the issue of Karabakh conflict always took the Azerbaijan’s side. They supposed that in this way they are defending the priority of the territorial integrity principle. But the Armenian diplomacy succeeded in convincing the Georgians and the Chinese that the analogies between Karabakh, Taiwan and Abkhazia are absolutely not suitable.
If we judge by the voting on the justification of including the issue of the situation in the security zone in the agenda of the General Assembly, we see that less than the quarter of the UN member-countries support Azerbaijan today (42 out of 192). More than a half of the UN members either voted against or abstained from voting which is almost the same in this case. 49 countries did not participate in the voting at all which is also kind of expression of disagreement to the subject being discussed. Hence it is obvious that Azerbaijan has a very slim chance to pass a unilateral anti-Armenian resolution in the UN.
