A trilateral meeting between the Presidents of Armenia, Russia and Azerbaijan will take place in Astrakhan on October 27 at the initiative of the President of the Russian President, Dmitry Medvedev. During the meeting the parties will continue the talks on the peaceful settlement of the Nagorno Karabakh conflict, President’s Press Office reported in the second half of yesterday. No other details of the planned meeting were reported yet. Such a trilateral meeting will be the first after Medvedev paid visits to Armenia and Azerbaijan earlier this year. This is quite a surprise not so much in the regard of the meeting but the dates. A meeting between the Presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan was expected but the political experts and pundits were anticipating this meeting in the beginning of December in the framework of the summit to be held in Astana. There were also various predictions that during this meeting even a document may be signed. But a meeting in the end of October wasn’t even expected by the people that are quite linked to the negotiation process and the government. Thus, most probably, this is an unplanned meeting in order to clarify something before the meeting in Astana. It is hard to tell what served a reason for such a meeting. Let us only recall that the last meeting of the Presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan was held in June of the current year again with the initiative of Russia – in Saint Petersburg. Only after this meeting it became clear that the Russian President has submitted to the sides some version of conflict resolution, which Armenia agreed to and Azerbaijan didn’t. After that the talks about the fact that Russia is providing S 300 systems to Azerbaijan. And in Armenia the government extended the terms of the deployment of Russian bases in Armenia. Thus, with certain reservations, we may assume that in the period after June Russia was trying to convince Azerbaijan to accept that version. And now a certain result is attained, which needs to be discussed before the Astana summit of the OSCE. In the coming days the actual incentives of this meeting will become clear. But prior to that today or maybe in the next week Edward Sharmazanov in his specific style will state that Aliyev was called to Moscow to sign under the defeating document. And the ANC will make a statement that Sargsyan was called to Moscow to sign a document of capitulation.
