The Declaration on Peoples’ Universal Rights to Self-Determination adopted at the 64th session of the UN General Assembly proved to be another shock to the Azerbaijani Political Establishment. The neighboring state’s best minds are now busy concocting an idea for their own society not to even doubt a settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict in Azerbaijan’s favor.

It should be noted that Azerbaijan’s incumbent authorities has for a long time cunningly tried to convince all and sundry that the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict has nothing in common with the principle of peoples’ right to self-determination. Moreover, with cynicism, official Baku states that it admits this fundamental legal norm. However, Ilham Aliyev and his clan see the practical application of this principle only within Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity. This is an obvious attempt to impose ungrounded restrictions on the fundamental international principle.

It is in this vein that the Azeri mass media are now taking vain attempts to show that the resolution adopted by the UN General Assembly on December 18 will have no effect on the Nagorno-Karabakh peace process. And it is natural: the Azerbaijani authorities have for years been boasting of the UN resolutions which, according to their unilateral interpretation, contain elements of criticism against Armenia’s actions during the bloody conflict. And now the Azeri leader is faced with a serious test: even the “best traditions” of Azerbaijan’s the state and propaganda machinery cannot cause the developments to revert and present the UN General Assembly’s resolution in a favorable light for Azerbaijan.

After one has looked though articles published by the central Azerbaijani mass media, which are known to be controlled by Ilham Aliyev’s clan, one get the impression that Azerbaijan has reconciled itself to inevitable changes in the international situation as far as Nagorno-Karabakh is concerned. Official Baku is disposed to seeking cold comfort in that the last resolution of the UN General Assembly does not say anything about the priority of nations’ right to self-determination over the principle of territorial integrity. The Azeri mass media, however, when they address this priority, betray the untenable ‘starting point" of their own propaganda. Sometime, someone in Baku decided that the territorial integrity principle is a priority over that of nations’ right to self-determination, and that is the reason for the brainwashing of Azerbaijan’s society. Now, in response to the December 18 resolution, Baku refers to it as not containing a point on the priority of nations’ right to self-determination over territorial integrity, ignoring the fact that no one has ever spoken of the priority of the second principle of international law over the first.

No wonder. Azerbaijan has always had problem with perceiving the actuality, seized with regular fits of lie and hysteria. After all, it is a problem of Azerbaijan, not Armenia. The UN has once again confirmed peoples’ right to self-determination as a fundamental principle of international law, which will certainly have its impact on the Nagorno-Karabakh peace process.

T.P.