"It was a compromise for Russia," Dmitry Trenin of the Moscow Carnegie Endowment said. In exchange, Russia won a seat as co-chairman of the Minsk Group, the peace-negotiating arm of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, which met earlier this week in Budapest.
Foreign peacekeeping troops could be serving early next year in Nagorno-Karabakh, the Armenian enclave in Azerbaijan which has been the center of a bloody conflict since 1988, according to Piotr Switalski, the head of the support staff to the chairman in office of the CSCE Minsk Group.
"The only problem was to persuade Russia that the CSCE can do peacekeeping," Switalski said, adding that it would be the first time the body had attempted a peacekeeping operation. "Russia has accepted that the CSCE can do it. It represents a new decision for Russia."
Russian attempts to win carte blanche for peacekeeping forces, to come solely from Russia or the Commonwealth of Independent States, had little chance because of Azerbaijan's objections, Trenin said. Instead, Russia would provide only a third of the 3,000-strong peacekeeping force, with Turkey providing another third.
Austria, Norway, Croatia and the Netherlands pledged the balance of troops and the U.S. will provide logistical and air support, said Switalski, who was present at the conference. Command of the force will likely go to Finnish Major General Heikki Vilen, who is in charge of preliminary planning of the operation.
Pledges for troops and logistical support for the operation, given by heads of state at the Budapest summit, have already covered what is needed, allaying some of Russia's doubts, Switalski said.
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