Third Party Mediation in Nagorno Karabakh: Part of the Cure or Part of the Disease?

The dissolution of the Soviet Union has caused manyconflicts of different types in the Caucasus region. Among them, the conflict in Nagorno- Karabakh turnedout to be the most intractable dispute since it hadthe properties of a modern global conflict in termsof territorial, ethnic and national dimensions, intertwined with a historical burden of ancientgrievances. Many major states and regional actorssuch as Iran, Russia, Kazakhstan, Turkey and OSCE, initiated third party mediation in order to resolvethe conflict and to terminate violence. Today, manycritics argue that the mediators were to blame forthe delay of a peaceful settlement since they gavefirst priority to their own interests and stalled thenegotiation process. In this book, the author'sapproach is predicated on various theoreticalframeworks of mediation. The contribution of themediators to the failure of negotiations is examinedwith a focus on the third party mediation; variablesconcerning the mediator, the conflict and thenegotiation process. In doing so, the author findsthe mediator motives to be of great significance whenit comes to conflict settlement in strategicallyimportant regions.