High turnout in Nagorno-Karabakh

!0 Dec. 2006
BBC News
By Matthew Collin

The Nagorno-Karabakh issue still divides many in the region
There has been a high turnout in a referendum on a proposed constitution for the disputed former Soviet territory of Nagorno-Karabakh.

Officials in Nagorno-Karabakh hope the vote will take the region a step closer to becoming an independent state.

A war between Azerbaijan and Armenia in the early 1990s killed up to 30,000 people and left the territory under ethnic Armenian control.

But the Azeri government insists that it remains part of Azerbaijan.

The head of the election commission in Nagorno-Karabakh announced that the turnout was high enough to make the referendum valid.

The result is expected be a strong endorsement for the proposed constitution, which would declare this small mountainous enclave to be a sovereign, democratic republic. The referendum came 12 years after the ceasefire which ended the war between Armenia and Azerbaijan.

But with many of the one million people displaced by the war still unable to return to their homes, the issue of Nagorno-Karabakh still provokes bitter resentments in the region.

Autonomy rejected

The separatist president of Nagorno-Karabakh, Arkady Gukasyan, said this was a historic chance to establish a democratic state.


But he admitted it did not mean the international community would immediately recognise Nagorno-Karabakh's independence.

Armenia supports the region's ambition to become independent.

But Nagorno-Karabakh lies within Azerbaijan, and the Azeri government insists it must not be allowed to break away.

It said the referendum was illegal, and could damage the peace process.

Azerbaijan has offered Nagorno-Karabakh widespread autonomy as part of a peace deal.

But that has been rejected by the separatist authorities.

The conflicting opinions about the referendum simply demonstrate that even after years of peace talks, a solution to this long-running dispute remains hard to find.

Note: Above are excerpts from the article. The full article appears here. Clarifications and comments by me are contained in {}. Deletions are marked by [...]. The bold emphasis is mine.