South Caucasus

This Saturday marks the fifth anniversary of the Second Karabakh War. To be honest, and personally speaking, it had always seemed the continuation of the first waged between Armenia and Azerbaijan in the early 1990s. After all, in the three decades between both, the conflict had nearly always been described as ‘frozen’ rather than resolved – at least until it wasn’t.

Yesterday (23 September) around thirty Armenians involved in the five Armenian-Azerbaijani Thematic Groups gathered in Yerevan to be briefed by Leonid Narsisian, co-Chair of the thematic group on Peace and Security; Narek Minasyan, Chair of the thematic group on regional connectivity; Sargis Harutyunyan, Chair of the thematic group on Governance; Aghavni Harutyunyan, Deputy Chair of the thematic group on Environment; and Andranik Shirinyan, Deputy Chair of the thematic group on gender and diversity. The Thematic Groups are a LINKS Europe initiative aimed at promoting a new style of Armenia-Azerbaijan dialogue, fit for the new reality. They will present their five reports in mid-November. We were delighted to welcome to the meeting in Yerevan, Murad Muradov, Azerbaijani co-Chair of the thematic group on peace and security who also spoke. Others to address the meeting included Erik Jessen, Political Officer at the EU Delegation in Armenia, Stepan Grigoryan, Senior Member of the Armenia-Azerbaijan Expert Strategic Platform (under the auspices of LINKS Europe), and Dennis Sammut, Director and George Simonishvili, South Caucasus coordinator, of LINKS Europe. It was a very good and engaging meeting, also attended by representatives of various embassies, including HE Marieke Monroy-Winter, the Ambassador of The Netherlands. A similar meeting with Azerbaijani members will take place in Baku on Friday (26 September). The Armenian and Azerbaijani members have been meeting on line since April. On 27 October they will meet together in Tbilisi to finalise their work.