ABSTRACT
The Nagorno-Karabakh conflict has been one of the most persistent ethnic violent conflicts since the demise of the USSR. Already in 1988, large demonstrations followed in Armenia after the refusal of USSR to transfer NagornoKarabakh (an enclave of a 200,000 majority of largely Christian Armenians within the territory of Muslim Azerbaijan) to Armenia from Azerbaijan where it had been since 1936. Azeris fled the enclave and Armenians in Azerbaijan were harassed, Azerbaijan closed its borders to Armenia and in December 1989 Armenia declared Nagorno-Karabakh part of Armenia. In 1990, there were armed clashes between Armenians and Azeris in Nagorno-Karabakh. In September 1991, after the Moscow coup, Armenia voted to include Nagorno-Karabakh in Armenia. From late fall 1991, para-military groups engaged in armed clashes which developed into a civil war in which some 800,000 Azeris and some 400,000 Armenians were displaced and some 25,000 died, a very significant war toll. Armenian troops helped to ‘cleanse’ Nagorno-Karabakh and the Lachin corridor (connecting Nagorno-Karabakh to Armenia) from Azeris. Initially, Russia took the Azeri side but later changed its support to the Armenians. A cease-fire agreement was negotiated in 1994, brokered by Russia and Kyrgyztan, but there was no follow-up resolution of the conflict itself. In 1997, NagornoKarabakh declared its independence.1 The same year, the OSCE created the socalled Minsk Group (consisting of Armenia and Azerbaijan, Russia, the USA and France) to mediate in the conflict and offered a peace plan, which the Armenian nationalists opposed. In the turmoil that followed, Robert Kocharian, an astute Nagorno-Karabakh defender, was elected president of Armenia. This was Yeltsin’s heritage to Putin with respect to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.
