Presidents meet in Sochi, agree on 'preamble' of Karabakh agreement

Armenian President Serzh Sargsian met with his Azerbaijani counterpart Ilham Aliev in Sochi today with the mediation of Russia’s President Dmitri Medvedev. The meeting ended in an agreement on the preamble to Karabakh deal.
“”Today, the main result was the agreement, which although we have some parts of the document that are not object of mutual consent, all the sides will prepare their concrete proposals, their concrete wording of all these parts, which will be worked into the text,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said after the meeting, adding, that the presidents have agreed on the ‘preamble’ of the Karabakh agreement.
Presidents made no public statements, meaning, there’s nothing to state about. As to Lavrov’s big announcement – that’s what FM’s are for, right? To explain lack of progress. Russian’ agencies reported the ‘preambel’ agreement with great deal of enthusiasm, indicating a desire to justify Medvedev’s mediation. But really, what could be in that ‘preamble’? Let me guess:

1. Some opening phrases, stating in abstract words a desire for peaceful resolution.
2. Some dumb phrase about how it would bring peace to the Caucasus and the region
3. Some sort of an indication, that OSCE Minsk group have not wasted all the money allocated for their work, travel, hotels, etc, and that they’ve done the job right.
4. Good old clauses about the importance of reaching an agreement withing the principles of ‘territorial integrity’ and ‘people’s self-determination’.

So, in essence, nothing new and breaking. The ‘preamble’ is probably just a copy-paste of the November 2008 Moscow declaration, designed to make Medvedev feel good about himself. Meanwhile, expectations were somewhat higher, knowing, that Turkey is waiting for a breakthrough to go on with ratification of Armenian-Turkish protocols, and both US and Russia, the superpowers, are very much interested in moving both processes forward.