Controlling a rigged object animation from the animation editor

Allright, the scene setup is as follows:

I have a gameobject that has a rigged mesh on it with animations. Imagine a forklift, which has a complex animation of lifting the forks, created in a 3D package and imported into Unity. Now I’d like to be able to control the animation phase from a curve - ie. at frame 0 have the animation phase/time at 0, at frame 60 have it at 0.5, etc.

Is there a way to control this from the animation editor window?

If you want to edit the imported animation, duplicate it first, then add it to the animation list. You should be able to edit the duplicated animation using the Animation window.