Monday, March 25 2019 18:46

ArmInfo.The agreement on the next meeting is a maximum of expectations from Nikol Pashinyan's upcoming meeting with Ilham Aliyev. ArmInfo expressed the opinion of  the Director of the Caucasus Institute Alexander Iskandaryan.

According to ArmInfo's foreign diplomatic sources, the meeting of  Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and Azerbaijani President  Ilham Aliyev will be held March 29 in Vienna with the mediation of  the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs. According to Pashinyan, the agenda of  his meeting with the Azerbaijani President is the specification of  principles for resolving the conflict and the issue of bringing  Artsakh to the negotiating table."In my opinion, today we can discuss  the restart of the idle negotiation process for quite a long time. A  series of unofficial meetings between the Prime Minister of Armenia  and the President of Azerbaijan is aimed at achieving precisely this  goal. And, of course, the recent activities and statements of the  OSCE Minsk Group in the aggregate, it leads to a restart of the  negotiation process. It is imperative that the leaders of the  conflicting countries meet periodically, "he stressedCommenting on  the possible agenda of the upcoming talks, the political scientist  expressed serious doubts about the possibility of the parties to the  conflict and the co-chairs refusing the existing principles of  settlement. 

According to his estimates, the negotiations will continue on the  basis of and around the Madrid principles.  According to Iskandaryan,  these principles can be varied, give different contexts and even  meaning, however, it is impossible to remove them from the  negotiating table today. "Yes, the Madrid principles are not in the  interests and do not like either Yerevan, Baku or, especially  Stepanakert. At the same time, they are more harmful for Azerbaijan  than for the Armenian parties to the conflict. That is why in Yerevan  the time for negotiation is voiced within the framework of these  principles. Armenian politicians are mercilessly criticized for this,  but, nevertheless, they at least have the opportunity to say this,  unlike Azerbaijani politicians. Although the negotiations over the  past few years have been within the framework and on the basis of the  Madrid principles, "summarize Iskandaryan. Since 1992, the OSCE Minsk  Group, represented by the co-chairs from Russia, the United States  and France, has been involved in resolving the Karabakh conflict. At  present, the settlement process is proceeding on the basis of the  Madrid Principles put forward by the OSCE Minsk Group in 2007 and the  Madrid Principles updated in 2009, among other things providing for  territorial concessions from Artsakh and the deployment of a  peacekeeping contingent in the conflict zone. We are talking about at  least six districts of the republic. 

Since the signing of the trilateral agreement on the establishment of  a truce between the parties to the Karabakh conflict, almost a  quarter of a century has passed. And all these years, surges of  murders on the contact line have been interspersed with negotiations  towards peace. However, since the end of last year, the killings have  practically stopped, and the OSCE MG mediators, Baku and Yerevan,  have started talking about the need to prepare the parties to the  conflict for peace.