Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct.28
By Seba Agayeva - Trend:
Paris meeting of the presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan to settle the Armenian-Azerbaijani Nagorno-Karabakh conflict can be considered successful, professor of Western University Fikret Sadikhov told Trend Oct.28, commenting on the meeting of the two presidents.
"In any case, the meeting is a positive factor," Sadikhov said. "It demonstrates the peacefulness of Azerbaijani diplomacy, official Baku and its desire to resolve this long-running conflict peacefully. That is an advantage and the priority of Azerbaijani diplomacy."
Joint meeting of Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan with the co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group took place in Paris October 27, the official website of the Azerbaijani president said earlier.
The meeting took place at the initiative of French President Francois Hollande. Then there was a meeting of President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev and President of Armenia Serzh Sargsyan.
Thereafter, a joint meeting of French President Francois Hollande, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan with the co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group took place.
"As for the meeting of the presidents of Azerbaijan and Armenia, I think that those pragmatically assessing and making predictions did not expect any radical changes at this meeting," he said.
"The problem itself is too complex. It was impossible to ensure a variety of geopolitical interests at one meeting with anyone, given that the efforts are made up until now to create balance between Armenia and Azerbaijan."
He said that an agreement on the exchange of information on missing persons, hostages and prisoners of war was reached, which is little progress.
"It is also important," he said. "The main thing is to take into account Armenia's stubborn position, which apparently needs to be forced to peace."
He said that the French president expressed the desire on the need to start working on the Comprehensive Peace Agreement between Azerbaijan and Armenia.
The political analyst said that the primary information on the outcome of the meeting gives reason to say that in any case the meeting was not useless.
"The meeting created an opportunity for Azerbaijan to express its attitude to the conflict, its position, to discuss the most sensitive points of the conflict and to recall the occupation of Azerbaijani territories," he said. "In this aspect, I think that in general, the meeting can be considered successful and positive at another stage of searching for further ways to resolve the issue."
The conflict between the two South Caucasus countries began in 1988 when Armenia made territorial claims against Azerbaijan. As a result of the ensuing war, in 1992 Armenian armed forces occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan, including the Nagorno-Karabakh region and seven surrounding districts.
Armenia and Azerbaijan signed a ceasefire agreement in 1994. The co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group, Russia, France and the U.S. are currently holding peace negotiations. Armenia has not yet implemented four U.N. Security Council resolutions on the liberation of the Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding regions.
During a visit to the South Caucasus region in May, French president reaffirmed the commitment of France as a co-chairing country of the Minsk Group to continue mediating to search for a peaceful solution to this conflict, twenty years after the ceasefire agreement entered into force.