Presidents of Russia, Armenia and Azerbaijan fail to reach Nagorno Karabakh deal

Meeting of Presidents of Azerbaijan, Armenia and Russia in Kazan has ended without reaching an agreement regarding the basic principles for the settlement of the Nagorno Karabakh conflict. A joint statement has followed the meeting. In the statement the sides noted the progress towards achieving this goal. Negotiations on Nagorno-Karabakh conflict were held in the Kazan Kremlin and lasted over three hours.

The presidents of Russia, Armenia and Azerbaijan Dmitry Medvedev, Serzh Sargsyan and Ilham Aliyev discussed the basic principles of Nagorno Karabakh conflict settlement on Friday in Kazan.

"The heads of states noted the achievement in mutual understanding on a number of issues that contribute to creating conditions for the approval of the basic principles," - a joint statement says.

The document also stated that the meeting of the participants reviewed the work carried out in order to harmonize the draft guidelines. The presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan expressed their appreciation to the leaders of Russia, USA and France, the co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group "for their constant attention to the problem of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict." They appreciated the personal efforts of the Russian president to promote the agreements, the joint statement says.

The Kazan summit is the ninth Tripartite Summit since 2008 and the second this year. Despite the lack of achievement in reaching a complete agreement between the parties, the Russian mediation remains the main driving force behind the negotiation process. The efforts of Dmitry Medvedev to personally moderate the dialogue between Azerbaijani and Armenian presidents exert a significant influence on the general course of discussion and movement toward progress. There is a slow evolutionary process of negotiation accompanied by a methodical progress. The lack of a breakthrough can be attributed to a weak political position of President Serzh Sargsyan at home regarding the terms of a mandate for the adoption of a sole solution in the negotiations with Azerbaijan. The issue at stake, according to editor-in-chief of Vestnik Kavkaza, Alexei Vlasov, is the extent to which the political situation in Armenia will help to ensure the fact that the Karabakh conflict goes beyond the level of internal conflicts and enters the sphere of South Caucasian politics.

One can safely say that Russia will not retreat from the active mediation between Armenia and Azerbaijan and will further facilitate the progress in the negotiations.

The basic principles for resolving the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, known as the "Madrid principles" were presented to Armenia and Azerbaijan by foreign ministers of France and Russia and the US Assistant Secretary of State in November 2007. In 2010, the mediators gave the Armenian and Azerbaijani sides an updated version.

The Madrid principles include, inter alia, the return of territories around Nagorno-Karabakh to Azerbaijan, an interim status of Nagorno-Karabakh, which provides guarantees of security and a self-corridor linking Armenia with Nagorno-Karabakh, definition of the future final legal status of Nagorno-Karabakh through a legally binding will of its people, right of all internal, displaced persons and refugees to return to their former homes, as well as international security guarantees, including a peacekeeping  m