Kosovo

On Sunday, the parliament of Kosovo declared the two-million-person republic independent from Serbia. As the repercussions begin to emerge, the various minority regions of the former Soviet Union are being watched closely. New America Senior Research Fellow Anatol Lieven comments in this piece from Azeri news service, Trend.

THOUGH the international community does not accept Kosovo’s independence to be a precedent for other conflicts in the region based on ethnic separatism, Anatol Lieven, a prominent British analyst, disagrees with such statements.

"Kosovo and Nagorno-Karabakh are different conflicts, but at the same time they are both separatist conflicts in autonomous areas in other states, inevitably, what happens in one will have a certain effect on what happens in the other", Anatol Lieven, British policy analyst and chairman of International Relations and Terrorism Studies at King's College London, told Trend's correspondent in London.

Lieven believes that the Kosovo example can be applied to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. "Why not? It is easy to say that things are specific, but it depends who is doing the talking. Everybody tries to make up different rules, different cases. But in fact, of course, it does set a precedent", said the British analyst.

Kosovo's independence will have repercussions for the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, he says.