ArmInfo.The regular meetings of the foreign ministers and the leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan, organized by the mediators, are the maximum that negotiations on Karabakh can continue. President of the Scientific Society of Caucasus Studies Alexander Krylov expressed such opinion to ArmInfo.
"At the same time, the result of such meetings will differ little from the results we have seen over the past decades. The next stage of negotiations will culminate in reaching an agreement on new meetings between the foreign ministers and the states. There are still prerequisites for advancing the process. They can only appear readiness for concessions from at least one of the parties to the conflict, "he noted.
Meanwhile, according to Krylov, neither Ilham Aliyev nor Nikol Pashinyan are ready to make concessions today. After the idea expressed by the Armenian prime minister that the idea of the need to return Karabakh to the negotiating table, which is unacceptable for the Azerbaijani counterpart, is fundamentally unacceptable, the political scientist predicts that the negotiation process will again be in a frozen state.
On Friday, March 29, in Vienna, with the mediation of the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan will meet with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev. The meeting agenda includes discussion of the principles and elements of the settlement of the Karabakh conflict. On March 28, in the capital of Austria, a meeting of the Foreign Ministers of Armenia and Azerbaijan, Zohrab Mnatsakanyan and Elmar Mamedyarov was held. The ministerial meeting was preceded by their separate meetings with the mediators.
In general, Krylov assesses the idea of the need to return the Karabakh people to the negotiating table as correct, considering the exclusion of Karabakh from the process as a big mistake by Yerevan. Thus, Armenia actually reduced the Karabakh conflict to an interstate conflict, to the issue of "occupied territories" represented by Baku. However, despite the consent of the mediators, the return of Karabakh to the process, in the case of the consent of all parties, in practice, in his opinion, in view of Baku's disagreement, this is impossible.
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 the deployment of a peacekeeping contingent in the conflict zone.