On the day of the working meeting between Serzh Sargsyan and Vladimir Putin in Sochi, US co-chair of the OSCE Minsk Group, Richard Hoagland, held a farewell press conference in Washington. He said that the permanent co-chair has already been appointed, that he retires, and presented some principal provisions of the Karabakh conflict settlement.
There are two opinions: first, that the coincidence is purely by chance, and second, that it wasn’t by chance at all. According to the comments of the experts holding the second opinion, by making a noisy statement on the day of Sargsyan-Putin meeting, the US either was reminding of itself, or trying to prevent some separate agreements between the Presidents of Armenia and Russia. We believe, however, that what happened the day before was a unique example of Russian-American cooperation.
The thing is that because of Russia’s role in the April war, Vladimir Putin has lost the legitimacy of telling, asking, or obliging Serzh Sargsyan to do something about this issue. And it has no leverages over Azerbaijan. Maximum it is possible that Ilham Aliyev might have agreed to the confidence-building agenda, provided that several principal provisions of the conflict would parallelly be discussed as well, for example, the withdrawal of Armenian troops from some territories.
The Russian president, apparently, has tricked, by conveying to Serzh Sargsyan only that Aliyev is ready to speak of Vienna and Saint Petersburg agreements. And the role of promoting dialogue on the conflict settlement principles has been reserved for the MG American wing.
This trick puts Serzh Sargsyan in a difficult situation. If he agreed to the autumn meeting based on the information conveyed by the Russian president, then referring to a statement made by the resigning OSCE Minsk Group co-chair, refusal will be considered absurd.
P.S. Russian President welcomed Serzh Sargsyan in Sochi with high note of international ceremony: he greeted him at the doors, they spoke in the presence of delegations. Unlike Serzh Sargsyan, Putin did not welcome Aliyev, even the dress code was unofficial.
Anna HAKOBYAN