Weren't the Madrid Principles better than the package version and than what we have today? Wasn't the Kazan document better than the phased version in 1997 and than what we have today? I think the answer is obvious. The second president of Armenia, leader of the opposition "Armenia" Bloc Robert Kocharyan stated this during his year-end press conference Monday—and referring to the question of how it turned out that the positions and opportunities of the Armenian side did not increase as a result of prolonging the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh (Artsakh) conflict, and whether the package version was not better than what we have now.
Referring to the accusation that during his tenure Karabakh was left out of the peace negotiations as a full-fledged party, Kocharyan said as follows, in particular: "The last substantive discussion within the framework of the [OSCE] Minsk Group took place in October 1996, [when] I was the President of Karabakh. After that, there was one meeting that did not reach the content part. And that meeting took place on April 1, 1997, when I was the Prime Minister of the Republic of Armenia appointed 10 days ago.
In January 1997, the Co-Chairs changed, and the troika—Russia, the US, and France—was formed. Before that there was Russia, and the other countries were changing—Finland, Sweden. And the main discussions were within the framework of the Minsk Group. Ambassadors from nine countries were gathering, there was a discussion. They were more mental exercises. Turkey was there too.
The Co-Chairs decided in January 1997 to hold another meeting in the format of the Minsk Group—but the troika was already chairing that meeting. And on the last day of that meeting they announced that they were moving to shuttle diplomacy. They saw that the issue did not move forward in the format of the Minsk Group, and [therefore] changed the format of participation. The co-chairs have not assembled a Minsk Group since then. If the Armenian authorities do not know about it, it is the peak of cosmic ignorance. If they know, they do not say, they deceive, it is a knavery. I do not know which version it is.
They have not gathered the Minsk Group anymore. I had the next meeting with the president of Azerbaijan on April 1, 1999, in Russia, through the mediation of [then Russian President] Yeltsin. After that, a meeting took place during the NATO summit in late April.
(…) it was the decision of the troika not to assemble the Minsk Group anymore, they announced that they were pursuing shuttle diplomacy, and Karabakh has always been an active participant in it. During my 10 years [of tenure], there has not been a case when they [i.e., the mediators] came to Armenia and did not go to Karabakh," Kocharyan stated.
"Yes, Karabakh participated, but then that format disappeared altogether. The Minsk Group remained, but the discussions began to take a different format. If the co-chairs had gathered the same format, Karabakh would have been sitting at that table in the same way. They considered it ineffective and, to be honest, they considered it right," the second president of Armenia stated.