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Yesterday the Presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan Serzh Sargsyan and Ilham Aliev had a meeting in “Baltic Star” hotel, St. Petersburg. That was the fifth meeting the Presidents were having within a year. It’s remarkable that the first meeting, the Presidents had, was again held in St. Petersburg a year ago in the frameworks of the International Economic Forum. So, the Presidents met in the same place by the same agenda.

No breakthrough

“The meeting of the Presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan was conducted in a constructive manner. The parties reached agreement to move forward the negotiation process. The Foreign Ministers of the two countries were instructed to continue to work with the assistance of the OSCE Co-Chairs toward the synchronization the parties’ positions and arrangement of the next meeting between the Presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan,” says the official press release spread by the Armenian President’s Cabinet.

As soon as the meeting was over the Foreign Ministers of Armenia and Azerbaijan gave comments over the meeting. Armenian FM Edward Nalbandyan has particularly emphasized: “Though it is impossible to speak about a breakthrough the parties move forward and have agreed on continuing the negotiations.” The Azeri FM’s Elmar Mammediarov’s statement this time has some constructive elements. “The most important thing is that the parties have agreed on the need of advancing,” he said. The Azeri FM has also stressed that no breakthrough happened but added that some advancement has been made. Remember, that two weeks ago the very same official has been claiming that there was no advancement in the negotiations with Armenia. Let’s hope that Mammediarov will not forget his statement when there is no Armenian official nearby.

To conclude, we can guess that no breakthrough happened, but the parties are ready to continue the processes to pull the dispositions closer. Note that before the meeting we have already predicted that there won’t be any breakthrough (http://www.panorama.am/am/comments/2009/06/03/peterburg/) and we have also spoken about those reasons which make the resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict impossible in this period. So we can say that our previsions correspond to the reality.

Why is the breakthrough impossible?

It’s clear that both, the parties and the mediators understand agreement over a definite solution when saying breakthrough. Hence, when it is said there has been no breakthrough means that no agreement has been made over a definite solution, and that it is impossible in this period. We have already given our comments in this respect, but let’s repeat briefly.

First the parties, or at least one of them, are not ready to come to a definite solution. It means that there are no possibilities to come to an agreement by own initiative. Taking into account that one of the parties – Azerbaijan shows uncompromising disposition, makes military oriented statements, blames the Armenian party in being deconstructive and the co-chairs in having pro-Armenian positions, the only one to feel guilty in recording no breakthrough is the official Baku. This does not mean that the Armenian party has expressed obvious preparedness to make compromises. The Armenian party has presented three principles and readiness to negotiate.

We have also mentioned that the joint pressure by the co-chairs could be a way out. This means the parties will be highly recommended to come to a conclusion.

It would be better to negotiate, than…

In the context of St. Petersburg meeting another element, we guess, has principle notion in the resolution of Artsakh conflict.

As we have already mentioned the Azeri FM Elmar Mammediarov opposing his previous statements emphasized that there has been some advancement and that the negotiations with the Armenian party would be continued. And the significance of St. Petersburg meeting, in fact, is the current statement which is the evidence of changing Azeri disposition. Such things do not happen by chance. We think that Baku avoided taking the responsibility of ruining the negotiations.

We have been reporting earlier that Azerbaijan takes part in the negotiations based on the co-chairs’ recommendations just to guarantee their participation. In the reality they were intended to frustrate the process by using “Nabucco” card to make the co-chairs’ countries to press on Armenian party due to their energetic and geo-political interests.

It was not by chance that a day before St. Petersburg meeting Azeri minister of industry and energy made crucial critics of the current project. But this strategy was too simple.

Azerbaijan has been simply advised not to hope on some other factors, not to falsify the conflict. In this respect Turkey’s position was also important for Azerbaijan. It was obvious that they have been trying to include Turkey in the process and to make parallels with Armenian-Turkish and Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. But the co-chairs have put them clear that those two different issues should not be put together. The French co-chair Bernard Fassier himself paid a visit to Turkey to advise Ankara to avoid any participation. It turns out that a day before the St. Petersburg meeting the Turkish have also understood the situation. The Turkish FM Ahmed Davutoglu announced in Washington that the parties hopefully could make an advancement themselves trying not to make parallels with the Armenian-Turkish relations and Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.
To conclude, Turkey washed his hands of. In this case Baku could not claim that the Armenian party is not constructive and that the co-chairs have partial approaches. They did not want to ruin the process and feel responsible for that. To avoid it, Elmar Mammediarov stood next to Edward Nalbandyan and announced that they agreed with the Armenian party to continue the negotiations.

In any case, the negotiations and discussions are better than war and military oriented statements.