ON UNDERCURRENT OF SARGSYAN-ALIYEV MEETING IN KISHINEV
By Ivan Gharibyan

News.am
15:59 / 10/06/2009

The OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs are completing their regional visit,
which has proved to be the "poorest" both in interesting public
statements and in the traditional information leakage. One gets the
impression that the aim of the visit was informing the Armenian,
Azerbaijani and Nagorno-Karabakh public of the lack of connection
between the Armenia-Turkey normalization and Nagorno-Karabakh peace
processes, rather than preparing an Armenian-Azerbaijani presidential
meeting in Kishinev, Moldova.

The Kishinev meeting scheduled for October 8 is surrounded by an
interesting aura, making one to seek for new implications of the
international mediators’ official statements and actions. Their
assurances that the Sagsyan-Aliev meeting will not result in any
document being signed is evidence of their eagerly seeking to rule out
any obstacles to the normalization of the Armenian-Turkish relations
at the crucial moment and save the Armenian authorities from one
more "headache" — they are being criticized for their new foreign
policy as it is. The recently appointed U.S. Chairman of the OSCE
Minsk Group Robert Bradtke dodged the question by pointing out some
progress in the negotiations and expressing hope for greater progress
at the Kishinev meeting.

What may the long-awaited progress mean? A joint statement on the
necessity for revising the Madrid Principles by the Russian, French
and U.S. Presidents made it obvious that the OSCE MG Co-Chairs can
only progress in this direction. Moreover, an interview given to
NEWS.am by Russian Co-Chair of the OSCE Minsk Group Yuri Merzlyakov
suggests that the revised Madrid Principles are ready, but will be
submitted to the Presidents at the "right moment," rather than at
their meeting in Kishinev. At this point there emerges a question:
with the negotiations exclusively progressing to the final agreement
on a number of points of the Madrid Principles, what is the purpos
cording to Merzlyakov, the revised Madrid Principles will not be
submitted to them? It is purely logical that the purpose of the
Kishinev meeting is to ascertain the Armenian and Azeri leaders’
attitude to the revised Madrid Principles, which is impossible without
the documents being submitted to the Presidents.

Considering the Azerbaijani authorities’ "talent" for torpedoing the
negotiations for the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh process by
setting impracticable terms to the Armenian side at the crucial moment,
the international mediators decided to neutralize the inevitable effect
of the overlapping terms on the Nagorno-Karabakh peace process. This
can account for the mediators’ refusal to speed up the process to
prevent any detriment to the other, as American strategists designated
it, "parallel" Armenia-Turkey normalization process, which, in turn,
is supposed to have a positive effect on the Nagorno-Karabakh peace
process.