Time for a new meeting of Ilham Aliyev and Serzh Sargsyan?

The co-chairmen of the OSCE Minsk Group are preparing a new visit to the region of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict to discuss the possibility of a new round of negotiations between the presidents of Azerbaijan and Armenia. This was announced yesterday in the statement of the US Ambassador to Baku, Robert Cekuta.

In connection with Cekuta's statement, Vestnik Kavkaza talked with Azerbaijani and Armenian political analysts about whether a meeting of the presidents is possible in the near future, and what its most probable agenda would be.

A Milli Majlis deputy, political scientist Asim Mollazade, noted with regret that over the past eight months a new constructive program of talks has not been formed. "It is sad, but the entire negotiating process currently represents only an imitation of activity. The fact is that Armenia does not make a single step towards peace and only pretends to be involved in the negotiations. Moreover, all efforts will be futile as long as the OSCE itself ignores the fact that one member state of the OSCE occupies the territory of a neighboring country," he pointed out.

Director of the Caucasus Institute Alexander Iskandaryan said that the program of negotiations over time has not changed. "The agenda of the meetings on the Karabakh conflict is always there, but I do not see that there was anything out of the ordinary that can dramatically change this or that part of the negotiating process. The next meeting of the presidents in the continuation of the peace regulation process awaits us, but we should not expect anything new," he warned.

The Director of the Armenian branch of the Institute of CIS Countries, Alexander Markarov, does not expect any shift in the negotiations at the highest level in the near future either. "The agenda jas mostly not changed in the past few years. Great progress is not expected, but the process itself, its presence reduces the likelihood of negative developments. That means that the actual outcome of the negotiations is that in the foreseeable future there will be no large-scale actions. However, the adoption of any decision is also unlikely, nor is the signing of certain documents, or the coordination of new positions of the parties," the analyst noted.