According to sources, the presidents negotiated for more than four hours. Though the presidents didn’t give any information about the results after the meeting, we can assume on the base of the announcements of the Minsk group co-chairmen that the co-chairmen had more expectations before the meeting. The presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan haven’t given any information about the results of the meeting yet, but according to the announcements of the co-chairmen in spite of the positive attitude shown by both presidents, both sides haven’t changed their opinions about some issues. It is written in the announcement of the co-chairmen that the presidents liked the meeting and gave instructions to the ministers of foreign affairs to work with the Minsk group co-chairmen to work out new ways for solving the conflict. As for the American co-chairman of the Minsk group, Steven Mann, he announced that there was no tangible change in the attitudes of the parties. According to him now the co-chairmen are going to evaluate the results of the negotiations. Steven Mann said that during the meeting in Rambouillet the presidents of Azerbaijan and Armenia discussed issues regarding the Karabakh conflict in general, the presidents were calm, but they didn’t reach an agreement.
Yesterday they had to leave for Brussels to inform the OSCE chairman about the results of the meeting, and later in March the co-chairmen will hold a discussion on the Karabakh conflict resolution in Washington. “We must figure out where we will move from here”, said Mann and mentioned, “there are no results, no agreement was reached”. As for the president’s press secretary Viktor Soghomonyan, despite the fact that no agreement was reached, the Armenian party appreciates the fact that the negotiations will continue.
As for the foreign affairs minister of Azerbaijan, Elmar Mamediarov, regarding the meeting he said that Azerbaijan will not make any compromises regarding the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan. According to the Azerbaijani ANS TV channel Mamediarov said that the parties couldn’t reach an agreement regarding issues on returning refugees and the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan. Meanwhile the Azerbaijani foreign affairs minister also said that the parties had come to an agreement on seven issues out of the nine discussed issues. On the other hand according to sources of the “Azatutyun” radio station close to the parties holding negotiations this meeting was probably the most important attempt to reach an agreement between both sides after the meeting in Key-West and this will definitely go down in history of the conflict resolution. According to them the parties had some problems when discussing issues regarding Kelbajar and the status of Karabakh and they couldn’t move forward. So will the status of Karabakh be decided through a referendum? According to the mentioned source, they think that the referendum is a part of the status of Karabakh, but they prefer to describe it as just the status of Karabakh. There are assumptions that the Armenian party wants to take the troops out of the territories with the referendum in Karabakh and then give Kelbajar to Azerbaijan at the end all at the same time, when the Azerbaijani party agrees to organize a referendum in Karabakh. But Azerbaijan doesn’t agree with this suggestion and the parties couldn’t come to an arrangement in Rambouillet. Now we can say that the diplomats that had serious expectations from that meeting were disappointed after they saw that nothing really happened. Probably the reason was the fact that they had more expectations before the meeting. According to diplomats in all documents it must be stated that in case of providing security guarantees in Karabakh the Armenian troops must be taken out of the territories. The parties may also discuss issues regarding allocation of international peacekeeping troops in the region. Parallel to this, it is quite possible that the date for the referendum may be prolonged.
Anyway, on the base of the information we have we can assume that the diplomats that had good expectations have to confess now that nothing serious happened and the parties still have the same attitude as they had before the meeting in France.
It is worth to mention that Robert Kocharyan and Ilham Aliev agreed to continue the negotiations in March in Washington. The foreign affairs ministers of Azerbaijan and Armenia will meet with the co-chairmen of the Minsk group and discuss issues regarding the future meetings.