North-Irish model is inapplicable to Karabakh, experts say

The model that was used in Northern Ireland cannot be applied to settle the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, state the experts who have presented in Stepanakert a magazine "Public Participatory and Multi-Channel Diplomacy Mechanisms in Peace Processes: Lessons of Northern Ireland".

The magazine was presented on April 17 at the office of the NGO "Helsinki Initiative-92".

According to political scientist Karen Ogandjanyan, the chairman of the NGO, the Karabakh and the North-Irish conflicts are diametrically different.

"In Northern Ireland, they have a religious component, while in the Karabakh conflict it is absent. There, the parties to the conflict are members of international intergovernmental institutions of the United Kingdom; and Ireland is a member of the EU, while Nagorno-Karabakh is a mono-ethnic state," said Ogandjanyan.

Meanwhile, Tigran Grigoryan, a Karabakh political analyst, said that we can still identify several principles in the North-Irish conflict, which can be positively applied in the Karabakh context.

"Both the society of Northern Ireland and the society of the UK have a common ideological space and commitment to democratic principles, which is not the case in the totalitarian Azerbaijan. The second positive point is in the unconditional recognition of the right of Northern Ireland to decide on its future. What is also important is that the parties agreed not to use any military force, whereas we see that the aggressive rhetoric of Azerbaijan is growing every day, leading to destabilization in the conflict zone," said Grigoryan.