Karabakh Approves Pro-Independence Constitution

(RFE/RL) December 11, 2006 -- An overwhelming majority of voters in Azerbaijan's breakaway Nagorno-Karabakh region have approved a new pro-independence constitution.

According to official preliminary results from the December 10 referendum, as many as 98.6 percent of voters approved the constitution, which describes Nagorno-Karabakh as a sovereign state.

The predominantly Armenian enclave seceded from Soviet Azerbaijan in 1988, triggering a war that claimed about 30,000 lives.

Azerbaijan does not recognize Nagorno-Karabakh's independence and has rejected the referendum as having no legal meaning.

Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov today warned the vote would hamper international efforts to resolve
the conflict.

Both the European Union and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSC) today rejected the referendum. In a statement, the OSCE's chairman in office, Belgian Foreign Minister Karel De Gucht, also called the vote potentially harmful to the ongoing conflict settlement process, which, he said, has shown "visible progress" and is at a "promising juncture."

(Reuters, ITAR-TASS)

The Kremlin Looks At Kosovo...And Beyond

Russian President Vladimir Putin (right) greets Serbian President Boris Tadic in the Kremlin in November 2005 (TASS)

WILL THE KREMLIN BACK INDEPENDENCE? As the drive for independence grows in the Serbian province of Kosovo, the international community is speculating on how Russia, a veto-wielding member of the UN Security Council, will act. On September 22, Nicholas Whyte, director of the International Crisis Group's Europe Program, gave a briefing on the subject at RFE/RL's Washington, D.C., office. He speculated on what the Kremlin's "price" might be for agreeing to Kosovo's separation from Serbia.