The United States, Russia and France co-headed the Minsk Group for over three decades, jointly drafting numerous plans to end the conflict. Although the group has been effectively moribund since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Azerbaijan has been pressing for its formal dissolution.
Armenia said until recently that this should happen simultaneously with the signing of an Armenian-Azerbaijani peace treaty. But in yet another concession to Baku, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian dropped this condition during his August 8 talks with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev hosted by U.S. President Donald Trump.
The talks resulted in the initialing, rather than the signing, of the draft treaty. The foreign ministers of the two South Caucasus states went on to jointly ask the OSCE to liquidate the group.
The OSCE announced on Monday that its 57 member states, including the U.S., Russia and France, have unanimously decided to “close the Minsk process and related structures.” The closure process will be completed by December 1, it said in a statement.
“I would like to once again extend my warmest congratulations to Armenia and Azerbaijan on their historic agreements towards peace and normalization of relations and their resolute decision to start their prompt implementation,” the OSCE chairperson-in-office, Finnish Foreign Minister Elina Valtonen, was quoted by the statement as saying.
Karabakh’s exiled leadership has tried in vain to prevent such an outcome. In a recent appeal to the OSCE member states, it said the Minsk Group’s dissolution would legitimize the “ethnic cleansing carried out by Azerbaijan in Nagorno-Karabakh” during the September 2023 offensive that restored Baku’s full control over the region and forced its entire population to flee to Armenia.
“The conflict cannot be deemed resolved while an entire population remains uprooted, deprived of its inalienable rights,” read the appeal.
Artak Beglarian, a former Karabakh premier now based in Yerevan, said on Monday that the Karabakh Armenians will continue to assert their right to return to their homeland.
“It does not mean that in the event of a change in the position of the Armenian authorities, a new international mechanism cannot be formed regarding Artsakh,” Beglarian told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service.
Armenian opposition leaders insisted, meanwhile, that Pashinian again fulfilled an Azerbaijani demand without getting anything in return. Edmon Marukian, a former Pashinian ally leading the Bright Armenia party, said Yerevan not only “restricted the rights” of the Karabakh Armenians but also stripped itself of a bargaining chip in negotiations.
Even before the Washington talks, Pashinian dismissed calls for the Armenian government to champion the Karabakh Armenians’ right to safe repatriation in the international arena. He declared last month that the more than 120,000 Karabakh refugees should stop hoping to return to their homeland. They should instead “settle down in Armenia” and become its “full-fledged citizens,” he said.