The latest meeting of the Presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan in Chisinau, Moldova, brought no visible progress in the efforts to reach a political settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh process. This is clear from the conflicting statements made by the two leaders after the October 8 meeting. They imply, in turn, that the latest efforts of the mediators to reach a breakthrough in negotiations based on the so-called Madrid Principles may prove fruitless due to the conflicting positions of the two countries on those principles. 

The Madrid Principles, which are a vague framework for the future political solution of the 20-year conflict, were proposed in December 2007 by the three co-chairs of the Minsk group (the OSCE body in charge of the mediation process in Nagorno-Karabakh), the U.S., France, and Russia. They have since been the basis for extensive talks between the presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan, and have reportedly undergone changes in the process. The principles were not made public officially until the G8 summit in L’Aquila on July 10. As declared by the presidents of USA, France and Russia on July 10, the Principles include “inter alia”: 1) returning the territories surrounding Nagorno-Karabakh to Azerbaijani control; 2) an interim status for Nagorno-Karabakh providing guarantees for security and self-governance; 3) a corridor linking Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh; 4) a future determination of the final legal status of Nagorno-Karabakh through a legally binding public expression of will through a referendum; 4) the right of all internally displaced persons and refugees to return to their former places of residence; and 5) international security guarantees that would include a peacekeeping operation.

Although the order of implementation for these steps has never been clearly indicated, it was expected by default that their order would be approximately that indicated above. In particular, all comments made on the principles (including those made by the Minsk group co-chairmen, i.e. the official representatives of the three great powers), have indicated that the withdrawal of Armenian troops from the occupied regions around Nagorno-Karabakh and the return of refugees would be followed by actions aimed at determining the final status of Nagorno-Karabakh (and providing it with an interim status as one of the initial steps in that process). Azerbaijan, which considers Nagorno-Karabakh to be Azerbaijani territory, has previously supported this sequence of actions. Armenia, which supports self-determination for the enclave that is currently de-facto independent from Azerbaijan, has not protested against such a vision officially, although it has not presented details of an Armenian standpoint for a long time either.

Meanwhile, in an interview on Russian state TV (Vesti program) on September 21, Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan declared that according to his understanding of the Madrid principles, the return of refugees and Armenian withdrawal from the territories around Nagorno-Karabakh can be implemented only after the final status of Nagorno Karabakh is determined, thus reversing the order of events expected by Azerbaijan. In fact, the Armenian leader demonstrated he was continuing to seek settlement of the conflict by the formula of “status in exchange for lands.” This and other details of the interview implied that the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict is still far from resolution, a fact further evidenced by the outcomes of the Chisinau meeting.

The parallel process of normalizing Turkish-Armenian relations can create additional difficulties. Whereas Turkey, an ally of Azerbaijan, seeks to force Armenia to make concessions on Nagorno-Karabakh, the Armenian leaders on the contrary make every effort to demonstrate to both its domestic opposition and Armenians worldwide that the normalization with Turkey is by no means linked to the Karabakh resolution process. Such conflicting approaches came close to prevent the signing of the normalization protocols on October 10 in Switzerland, and it is obvious that concessions on the Karabakh issue will continue to be extremely difficult on part of both sides.