The conflicts in the South Caucasus appear impervious to solution. The hopes raised by independence have been dashed by an insidious cocktail of past and present regional hegemony, historical antipathy and Soviet planning. Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia, continue to wait for their long awaited Spring. In a region where Western academic writing has focused, during the last decade, almost exclusively on the dynamics of regional security and "Great Power" rivalry, even in the context of conflict, this volume provides a legal appraisal of the possible processes and structures which may, ultimately, facilitate the finding of constitutional settlement in Nagorno-Karabakh, Abkhazia and South Ossetia. In the work, Tom Potier, an academic lawyer with much experience in the Caucasus, has written an account which should prove not only to be of use to academics, diplomats and government officials working in the region, but also as a contribution to the ongoing development of the international law on self-determination and autonomy.