By Ivan Gharibyan

The OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs’ latest visit to the region took place under “too thick” a veil of secrecy: the international mediators showed themselves “persons of very few words” with the media. What is more, several days have passed, but no leak has so far come from the Azeri mass media.

Meanwhile, what is known as the Madrid document is taking on a strange aura. Both the international mediators and representatives of the conflicting parties admit the fact that the Nagorno-Karabakh peace process is developing under the Madrid document. From that point on, however, the sides do not show further “uniformity” in their positions. Rather, they show disagreements, and it is making them “as slight as possible” that the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs’ efforts must be aimed at.

The Madrid document is what “strange things” have recently happened to. During the Co-Chairs’ last visit to the region, Russian Co-Chair Yuri Merzlyakov told NEWS.am that the Madrid document had been revised and would be submitted to the Armenian and Azerbaijani leaders “at the right moment.” The “right moment”, however, never comes. In any case, no clear answer has been received to the question: did the Co-Chairs submit the revised document to Serzh Sargsyan and Ilham Aliyev during their latest visit to the region on November 4-6?

Considering all that is going with the Madrid Principles, one can arrive at two mutually exclusive conclusions. In the first case, the Nagorno-Karabakh peace process is progressing, and all the parties involved decided to stop leaking information on the Madrid document until they agree on the last details for Yerevan and Baku to reach an agreement without any problems. In the second case, the disagreements between the Armenian and Azerbaijan Presidents are so sharp that there is no point in speaking of any principles. The first conclusion is supported by the fact that the Armenian and Azerbaijani Presidents agreed to hold the sixth meeting late this year, which means that a bilateral agreement is possible. The opposite is corroborated by official Baku’s more frequent non-constructive statements, and Yerevan’s responses.

In any case, it is by the background to the next Sargsyan-Aliyev meeting scheduled for late November that one can judge the results. Despite the contradictory statements, on the threshold of the Armenian-Azerbaijani presidential meeting, we can at least form an idea of whether the peace process is “progressing” or “regressing”. The international mediators should remember, however, that the process of revising the Madrid Principles behind “too thick” a veil of secrecy may heighten the tension in both Armenia and Azerbaijan and impede the preparations for the implementation of agreements.