opportunities missed, opportunities seized - Carnegie Corporation of

78 John J. Maresca
Armeni an di aspora groups among uninformed politic i ans. A prime ex ample of
such actions - in - ignorance was Section 907 of the Freedom Support Act,pass ed by
the U. S . Congress in 1992. This clause was openly hostile to Azerbaijan and prohibited
direct U. S . aid to the government in Baku, even for hum anitari an purpos
es. Section 907 was intended as a retali ation against Azerbaijani and Turkish
blockades of Armeni a , but it ignored the suf fering also pres ent on the Azerbaijani
side. The basic ef fect of Section 907 was to prevent U. S . policy from appearing
truly imparti al , and thus to hinder U. S .medi ation ef fort s. 9
Perhaps the one advantage of the international community’s previous ignorance
of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict was that the West came into this problem
with relatively little political “baggage,” in terms of past positions or engagements.
It thus had roughly balanced credibility with both sides, in spite of
Section 907 and other pro-Armenian legislative positions—e.g., in the parliamentary
assembly of the Council of Europe. While the Azerbaijanis believed
that the West would, under domestic political pressure,favor the Armenian side,
the Armenians were concerned that the West, particularly the United States,
would tilt toward the interests of their Turkish allies. Moreover, suspicions on
both sides were somewhat allayed by even-handed reports from the first CSCE
fact-finding missions to the region. 10 The West also benefited from a contrast
with the Russians, up to then the only power seemingly interested in the problem,
who were the subject of deep suspicion and resentment on all sides, even
though they were needed and courted by everyone.
Despite the problems for an international intervention, the CSCE at its meeting
in Helsinki on March 24,1992, agreed that there should be an international
“Conference on Nagorno-Karabakh” to settle the dispute and that this conference
should be held as soon as possible in the Belarussian capital, Minsk.When
it proved difficult to convene the conference, the United States insisted that the
designated Italian chairman organize “emergency preliminary” negotiations to
prepare it. These “emergency preliminary” negotiations became known as the
Minsk Group. The Minsk Group included the small number of CSCE member
states that had volunteered to participate in the Minsk Conference for various
reasons (e.g., because they held or would shortly hold the rotating CSCE chairmanship,
or, in the case of Belarus, because they had offered to host the conference).
Only a few of these participants had real interest in the issue. The members
were Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Czechoslovakia, France, Germany,
Italy, Russia, Sweden, Turkey, and the United States.
It is worth noting that the informal Minsk Group and its negotiating process
were not created by the CSCE decision, which established only the formal Conference
on Nagorno-Karabakh; they were created by high-level U.S. insistence
that “emergency” negotiations begin. 11 To make early negotiations possible, the
United States also brokered an agreement under which both the Armenian and
Azerbaijani communities of Nagorno-Karabakh would participate separately in
the Minsk Group, though not as sovereign states.
The Minsk Group was initially quite successful; it managed to bring all the
parties to the conflict together around a single negotiating table. This was in
spite of the resistance of the Azerbaijani representatives, who did not want to