Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan's presence at the latest large-scale military exercises in Nagorno Karabakh means: "preparing for negotiations, we keep our gunpowder dry," says Sergey Markedonov, Russian political analyst, commenting on the upcoming Sargsyan-Aliyev in an interview with ArmInfo.
On 14 November, Serzh Sargsyan and his NKR counterpart Bako Sahakyan attended military exercises of the NKR Defense Army.
"After Sargsyan-led parliamentary majority-Republicans once again refused to recognize independence of Nagorno Karabakh, the president immediately traveled to the de-facto independent state demonstrating that NKR's military-political assistance is a priority for Armenia unlike declarative recognition of its sovereignty. Visiting Turkey, Aliyev, in turn, demonstrated that Baku-Ankara alliance is left unchanged and that Turkey still helps it to restore 'territorial integrity.' One can see here Aliyev's aspirations to hold tougher negotiations with Armenia," Markedonov says.
In this light, he thinks that despite US Department representative Victoria Nuland's optimistic statements on the readiness of the Armenian and Azerbaijani leaders for 'comprehensive talks,' there is little probability that their 'readiness' will bring any tangible result. It is more than obvious that both the leaders lack motivation. Therefore, the co-chairs and the countries of the OSCE Minsk Group should work harder to create mechanisms to prevent ceasefire breaches leading to human deaths on the line of contact. The analyst is sure that reducing the ceasefire breaches and death tolls will become a true platform for a diplomatic breakthrough in future.
After the November 4-5 visit of the OSCE MG Co-Chairs Igor Popov of Russia, James Warlick of the USA and Jacques Faur of France to Baku and Yerevan, the presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan expressed readiness to meet till the end of the year. They have not met since the meeting in Sochi two years ago. The last effort of the co-chairs to organize their meeting in June in Saltsburg failed.