Trilateral meeting in Paris of Presidents of France, Azerbaijan and Armenia

With the mediation of the President of France Francois Hollande in Paris there will be talks between President Ilham Aliyev and Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan on the Karabakh conflict settlement.

The basic document of the next round of talks will be the latest initiative of OSCE Minsk Group on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, which was announced by US Co James Warlick on May 10.

In his micro blog on Twitter, he expressed hope for a positive outcome of the meeting of the Presidents.

The French President during his tour of the South Caucasus, 11-12 May this year, clarified the first reaction of the Presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan to the co-chairs’ initiative for the phased solution to the conflict.

Leaked assessment of this idea by Baku and Yerevan showed that the parties are not delighted with the improved Madrid principles. The vulnerability of these ideas is the inability to reconcile the principles of territorial integrity, which Azerbaijan insists on, and the right of nations to self-determination, which the Armenian leadership wants to implement.

The inability to reconcile these two principles was the cause of the next exacerbation at the front at the end of July and the disruption of the planned trilateral meeting of the Presidents in Paris.

Instead Aliyev and Sargsyan exchanged "courtesies" in Sochi with the mediation of President Vladimir Putin on August 10. The parties agreed to renounce use of force and to begin preparations for the Paris meeting postponed until the fall.

The last meeting between the publicly conflicting Presidents was held in Wales on September 4, with the mediation of US Secretary of State John Kerry. Subsequent after the negotiations, mutual insults by the entourage of the Azerbaijani and Armenian Presidents showed that the parties have not developed new approaches to the Paris meeting. -0-