INVARIABLE FOUNDATION

If we talk about the topic of which of the politicians had the greatest impact on the Karabakh conflict settlement and made a key contribution to the definition of the strategic priorities of the peaceful settlement of the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict, we can state unequivocally - Heydar Aliyev. It was precisely his vision of ways to overcome the Karabakh crisis, consistent with international law in an objective manner, which formed the theoretical and practical basis of today's protracted conflict resolution process. It is a foundation that has no alternative.

Let's start with the fact that the rabid Armenian nationalists and their external backers were able to start the Armenian-Azerbaijani enmity, which turned into in a bloody conflict over Nagornyy Karabakh, only after the removal of Heydar Aliyev from the senior leadership of the USSR in October 1987. They were aware that the continuation of the Moscow stage in the remarkable political career of Aliyev would become an insurmountable obstacle to the secession of the then Nagornyy Karabakh Autonomous Oblast (NKAO) from Azerbaijan, which was long planned by Armenians. As a result, Heydar Aliyev, who had repeatedly suppressed Armenian expansionist initiatives, was dismissed by Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. After several days, the latter's adviser Abel Aganbekyan voiced the idea about the need to separate Nagornyy Karabakh from Azerbaijan not just anywhere but in the centre of the Western world - Paris.

Synchronously with the political gestures of Gorbachev's entourage, the Armenian SSR leadership embarked on the implementation of the plan for the secession of the mountainous part of Karabakh from Azerbaijan. By the end of 1988, Armenia became a mono-ethnic republic, from which the last 200,000 Azerbaijanis were expelled. And with the collapse of the USSR in late 1991, Armenia, with the support of powerful external centres, launched full-scale military operations against Azerbaijan. Taking advantage of political instability in our country, the Armenians in 1992-1993 managed to capture not only the territory of Nagornyy Karabakh, but also the surrounding seven districts - Kalbacar, Lacin, Qubadli, Cabrayil, Zangilan, Fizuli and Agdam. More than one million Azerbaijanis became refugees and IDPs.

Despite the adoption by the UN Security Council of four resolutions demanding the immediate withdrawal of Armenian forces from the occupied districts of Azerbaijan, Armenia has still not ended the occupation of one fifth of the territory of our state. The activities of the OSCE Minsk Group created as early as March 1992 and designed to contribute to the peaceful settlement of the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict on the basis of principles of international law, UN Security Council resolutions, the Helsinki Final Act and other international legal instruments are also unsuccessful.

However, all these 25 years, Azerbaijan has not only strengthened its independence, but also advocated step by step the principle of the inviolability of its territorial integrity and sovereign rights over Karabakh - indigenous Azerbaijani land - in the negotiation process. And the main credit for this, of course, belongs to Heydar Aliyev, who was president in 1993-2003 - a historic decade marked by the strengthening of Azerbaijani statehood, the establishment of political stability in the country and the beginning of reforms in all areas.

Heydar Aliyev outlined as a key sphere of state construction the creation of powerful armed forces as a guarantor of the security and territorial integrity of Azerbaijan. His efforts to form a regular efficient army made themselves felt after only three months after his election as head of state. On 5-6 January 1994, units of the National Army of Azerbaijan carried out a successful counter-attack in the south of Karabakh, liberating the town of Horadiz and 20 villages of Fizuli District, as well as two villages of Cabrayil District. As a result, the Armenian occupation forces were pushed back by 25 kilometres after suffering heavy losses. The Horadiz operation is rightly considered to be one of the most successful in the course of the Karabakh war unleashed by Armenia. In fact, it was a turning point in its course and, seriously concerned about the strengthening of Azerbaijani positions, the Armenian occupiers agreed to proceed with the peace process.

On 5 May 1994, the Bishkek protocol on a ceasefire on the Karabakh frontline was signed with the mediation of Russia. Later Heydar Aliyev used the truce to comprehensively strengthen the Azerbaijani state. Actually, the main content of Heydar Aliyev's "Karabakh" strategy is that a long-term solution to the conflict lies through the strengthening of Azerbaijan. It is the factor of strong Azerbaijan, which is ready for a long standoff exhausting the aggressor, Baku's rejection of any cooperation with the enemy and his complete isolation from the processes of regional integration that played a key role in the development of the conflict. And this approach, as time has shown, paid off in full.

An important achievement of Heydar Aliyev was the recognition of the Karabakh problem as a conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan and not as a "struggle for the self-determination of the Karabakh people", as the Armenian side sought. Baku agreed to provide the Armenians of Nagornyy Karabakh with the highest degree of self-rule within Azerbaijan, and Yerevan's rejection of this proposal was the compelling evidence that Armenia uses the principle of self-determination as a screen in the implementation of its occupation policy.

Speaking at the 49th session of the UN General Assembly in September 1994, Heydar Aliyev said: "The Republic of Armenia, under the pretext of the right to self-determination for the ethnic group of Armenians living in the Nagornyy Karabakh region of Azerbaijan, openly implements plans to annex the territory of our state, violently change its state borders and expel the Azerbaijani population from their native lands. All this is covered by an arbitrary interpretation of the right of peoples to self-determination as the right of any ethnic community to arbitrarily declare its independence and join another state. Such an interpretation of the right to self-determination enters into sharp contradiction with the principle of sovereignty and territorial integrity of the state. Any attempt to make this right absolute leads to violent conflicts."

Heydar Aliyev developed this far-sighted and timely idea at the Budapest Summit of the CSCE held in December 1994: "Today any local conflict influences the future of Europe and is logically perceived as a detonator of a new big explosion." In order to prevent such an "explosion", Heydar Aliyev proposed a big political agreement providing for a stage-by-stage settlement of the conflict - the withdrawal of Armenian troops from the occupied Azerbaijani territories, the lifting of the blockade of Armenia, the return of refugees and the involvement of a multinational peacekeeping force. On Nagornyy Karabakh's status, Heydar Aliyev said: "This can be autonomy in its broader forms. The Armenian side is trying to act from the position of force... Our position is different - we are in favour of a political solution to the problem..."

Shortly after the Budapest Summit, negotiations on a political agreement were held in February 1995, in which Azerbaijan headed by Heydar Aliyev refused to recognize Nagornyy Karabakh as a full side to the conflict settlement, since Nagornyy Karabakh is not a subject but an object of the conflict. But the triumph of this approach took place at the OSCE Lisbon Summit in December 1996.

On the eve of the Lisbon summit, Heydar Aliyev sent a special message to the heads of state and government of Europe and North America, in which he set forth the best formula for the settlement of the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict, based on the UN Charter and OSCE principles. The formula consists of three basic elements: the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan, the highest status of autonomy for Nagornyy Karabakh within Azerbaijan and security guarantees for the entire population of Nagornyy Karabakh, the Armenian and Azerbaijani communities (the latter, of course, will have to return to Nagornyy Karabakh). These conditions for the settlement of the conflict were included in the 20th paragraph of the Lisbon Declaration. This statement was included in the documents of the Lisbon summit, outlining the major diplomatic victory of Azerbaijan. Since the principles of the resolution of the Armenian-Azerbaijani Nagornyy Karabakh conflict were endorsed for the first time, determining the political and legal outlines of the activities of the OSCE Minsk Group, it meant the defeat of Armenian diplomacy, which was seeking a solution to the conflict on the basis of the formula: the independence of Nagornyy Karabakh in exchange for withdrawal from the surrounding occupied territories.

In September 1997, the co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group (US, Russia and France) presented a new peace plan, which provided for a stage-by-stage settlement of the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict on condition that Nagornyy Karabakh is a state and territorial entity within Azerbaijan. The then president of Armenia, Levon Ter-Petrosyan, was aware of the strategic futility of trying to keep the occupied territories of Azerbaijan, which was growing stronger and stronger, under the control of Yerevan and therefore, he agreed to compromise and approved the mediation proposals. But after that, Ter-Petrosyan was overthrown by the so-called "Karabakh clan" - a group which rejects any compromise that provides for Yerevan's abandonment of the occupation of Azerbaijani lands. This force came to power in Armenia. Its new president was former Prime Minister Robert Kocharyan, and shortly after he came to power, on 27 October 1999, supporters of the "Karabakh clan" committed an unprecedented massacre in the Armenian parliament. The gunmen, who burst into the assembly hall, shot eight people - Parliament Speaker Karen Demirchyan, Prime Minister Vazgen Sarkisyan, two deputy speakers, one minister and three deputies. Almost all of them were considered to be politicians inclined to a certain compromise in the Karabakh settlement. But this compromise was not acceptable to Kocharyan and his entourage, which clearly made itself felt during the negotiations.

It is notable that the terrorist attack on the Armenian parliament occurred on the eve of the OSCE Istanbul Summit and, in fact, was meant to demonstrate again Yerevan's categorical refusal to reach an agreement with Azerbaijan. In this situation, the co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group took the path of flirting with Kocharyan, dancing to the tune of the Armenian "war party". Not surprisingly, the outcomes of the OSCE Istanbul Summit had no direct reference to the principle of territorial integrity of Azerbaijan in the context of the settlement of the Karabakh conflict. Speaking at the forum, Heydar Aliyev strongly criticized the activities of the Minsk Group, since this entity was not able to achieve the goals set at the Lisbon summit. Later, he rejected the mediators' proposal on a "common state of Azerbaijan and Nagornyy Karabakh", which was actually aimed at legitimizing the Armenian occupation of Azerbaijani territories.

Another active round of negotiations took place in Key West, US, in April 2001, with the mediation of the OSCE Minsk Group. The result was an agreement between the parties to begin to develop a new plan to resolve the conflict. In Key West, Heydar Aliyev firmly stated that a solution is possible only on the basis of respect for the territorial integrity of states. In a press statement to the press, he again accused Armenia of aggression against Azerbaijan and implementing a policy of ethnic cleansing in Nagornyy Karabakh and other occupied territories.

Today Heydar Aliyev's policy is continued by his successor - Ilham Aliyev, whose position on the Karabakh issue is based on the premise that the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan is not and will never be a subject of negotiations. If you talk about a compromise Baku is ready to accept, then, as Ilham Aliyev has repeatedly stated, "our biggest compromise is commitment to peace talks".

At the same time, Azerbaijan demonstrates the willingness of its Armed Forces to liberate the occupied territories. It became very clear to all during the recent clashes in Karabakh. It was the recent successes of the Azerbaijani army that significantly reduced the arrogance of the Armenian president, which once emanated from the feeling of complete impunity for the crimes he had committed. So he trudged for advice to Ter-Petrosyan, whom he himself overthrew 15 years ago because he backed off in the negotiations with Heydar Aliyev. But what advice can Ter-Petrosyan, who warned his nation that it is better to agree with Azerbaijan, otherwise it will be too late later, give Sargsyan who has lost his head in frustration?

Armenia is aware that this fertile land will sooner or later return under the jurisdiction of Azerbaijani statehood, and only then will it find peace and prosperity. Heydar Aliyev, who dreamed of a happy and peaceful life for all inhabitants of the country, made a lot of effort for this. Heydar Aliyev was driven by the noble belief that "the state is richer if it brings more peoples together, for each of them makes its own contribution to world culture and civilization".