The hopes for serious progress in the Karabakh conflict after the St. Petersburg meeting were not well-grounded initially, Russian analyst Sergey Markedonov has told ArmInfo when commenting on the results of the Armenian, Russian and Azerbaijani Presidents' meeting in St. Petersburg.
During the negotiations of the presidents of Armenia, Russia and Azerbaijan on June 20 in Saint Petersburg Ilham Aliyev pointed out the necessity to overcome the status quo and expressed assurance that this can be done only by "de-occupation of Azerbaijan's territories". Serzh Sargsyan confined himself to regular announcement of Yerevan's adherence to peaceful settlement of the conflict complaining that unfortunately such conflicts can not settled by only one side's wish. The presidents once again expressed readiness to hold meetings in this format regularly and agreed on increase of number of the OSCE observers on the Line of Contact.
"The 'four-day' war in Karabakh took place two months ago. Though the military operations did not develop into a large-scale war, they became the most serious hostilities over the 22 years since the ceasefire agreement came into effect. Yerevan and Baku also fail to diplomatically demonstrate commitment to compromises and concessions," he says.
Markedonov stresses that Baku considers the April war as success. As regards the occupation of some insignificant parts of the Karabakh territory, the Azerbaijani authorities consider it as a stepping stone to the future in case the status quo remains. In this light, the analyst thinks the developments on June 19-24, including the military exercises on the Azerbaijani territory adjacent to the conflict zone are far from being accidental.
In case Baku quits the talks and chooses the use of force to settle the conflict, he thinks the high risks will be inevitable given that the Karabakh conflict is not a part of confrontation between the West and Russia. In this light, it will be hard to rely on the support of large players in case of war resumption, needless to say about Iran, which wants no escalation near its borders. The analyst says that there is no breakthrough in the Karabakh peace process, but at the same time, there are no proposals other than the Madrid Principles, which are supported by both Russia and the West.