Warsaw meeting of Azeri, Armenian leaders achieves no result – Armenian paper

Aravot, Yerevan
17 May 05

Text of article by Tigran Avetisyan entitled “Failure” carried by
Armenian newspaper Aravot on 17 May

Although the results of the meeting between Robert Kocharyan and
Ilham Aliyev, which took place on 15 May in Warsaw, were kept secret,
everything is clear: they failed. First, after the tete-a-tete meeting
of the presidents that lasted for two hours, they declined to give a
press conference and abstained from coming forward with a statement. It
is clear that had the talks been more or less successful they would not
have lost the opportunity of hinting to the international mediators
that they were constructive officials and that “successful dialogue”
had taken place.

The foreign ministers of the two countries were given the unthankful
job of mitigating the presidents’ failure and of making it more or
less “palatable”. In particular, Azerbaijani Foreign Minister [Elmar]
Mammadyarov commenting on the meeting said that the parties discussed
elements of the Prague option for a Karabakh settlement, regarding
which they “achieved a slight result”. Without going into details of
the “slight result” mentioned by the latter, let us only note that
Mammadyarov said some words which everybody expected from someone
in his position and immediately added that “there are issues around
which the positions of the sides deeply differ”. At this moment, it
is enough to compare “slight” and “deeply” to understand the results
of the Kocharyan-Aliyev meeting.

One more notable point: at the beginning of the meeting between
Kocharyan and Aliyev, the Russian, French, Armenian and Azerbaijani
foreign ministers as well as the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairmen were
present. Even if their had been just a little success, it may be
assumed that the mediators would have immediately announced their
contribution to this positive result. But the co-chairmen are silent.
It was only Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov who said: “I
cannot comment on the issues that are on the negotiating table of
the Armenian and Azerbaijani presidents.”

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress