ABSTRACT
A bitter struggle over mountainous (Nagorno )-Karabagh, a territory in western Azerbaijan, erupted in 1987. In September 1992, when several of the chapters in this volume were presented at an international conference in Prague, that bloody conflict had already escalated from, in the words of one observer, a "feud among neighbors" to a serious regional war. 1 All parties to the conflict seemed to believe they had more to gain on the battlefield than at the conference table and were plainly willing to go on fighting. As a result, all presented nonnegotiable demands that thwarted efforts to begin talks or achieve a cease-fire. As the final revision of this chapter was being prepared in the fall of 1994, conditions on the ground had changed radically: two governments had been forced from power in Azerbaijan, Armenian forces had achieved their military aims and occupied nearly 20 percent of Azerbaijan's territory, and a cease-fire remained in effect since May 1994. Russia had successfully and with impunity interfered in military and political affairs in the region and appeared on the verge of consolidating its role as self-proclaimed "peacekeeper" in these former Soviet republics.
