Breakaway Karabakh adopts pro-independence charter

Mon Dec 11, 2006
Reuters
By Hasmik Mkrtchyan

YEREVAN (Reuters) - Azerbaijan's breakaway Nagorno-Karabakh region has overwhelmingly approved a new pro-independence constitution, returns from a Sunday referendum showed.

According to official preliminary figures released on Monday, 98.6 percent of voters approved the constitution, which describes Karabakh as a sovereign state. Turnout was 87.2 percent.

"According to preliminary results, the constitution is adopted and December 10 from now can be declared as a Constitution Day," election commission chief Sergey Nasibyan told Reuters by telephone.

The vote was held on the 15th anniversary of a referendum in which Karabakh, which split from Azerbaijan in a 1990s war that killed 35,000 people, declared independence.

The new plebiscite was seen as a signal of commitment to independence by the region.

Azerbaijan and the international community do not recognize Nagorno-Karabakh's independence. There was no immediate reaction to the vote by the Azeri government.

Conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh, a mountainous territory about half the size of the Mediterranean island of Cyprus, is still unresolved, fuelling instability in a part of the world that is emerging as a major energy supplier.

The majority of people in Nagorno-Karabakh are Christian ethnic Armenians who associate themselves with neighboring Armenia rather than Azerbaijan, a majority Muslim state.

Azerbaijan is determined to restore its control over the region and said the referendum was illegitimate.

The fighting over Nagorno-Karabakh was the bloodiest of the separatist wars that broke out when the Soviet Union disintegrated. A fragile ceasefire has been in force since 1994 but there are still occasional exchanges of gunfire.

A major BP-led pipeline linking Azerbaijan's Caspian Sea oil fields to world markets passes a few kilometers (miles) from the conflict zone.

Ethnic clashes in the late 1980s escalated after the collapse of the Soviet Union into full-scale fighting. Armenia joined the fighting on the side of the separatists.

Though Azerbaijan lost that war, it is now threatening a new military campaign to crush the separatists if stalled peace talks do not produce results soon.

Nagorno-Karabakh differs from other "frozen conflicts" in ex-Soviet Georgia and Moldova in that former imperial master Russia has no presence there and no direct interest in supporting either side.


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