Goran Lennmarker, OSCE Parliamentary Assembly’s special rapporteur on the conflicts in Georgia and Nagorno-Karabakh, stated commenting on the Sochi meeting of the Armenian and Azeri presidents that “an agreement on the conflict settlement might be reached this spring”.

The participants of the January 25 meeting – the leaders of Armenia, Azerbaijan and Russia, as well as the Co-Chairs of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe’s Minsk Group (OSCE MG) – did not make any forecasts.

Maybe Lennmarker possesses information that isn’t known to others, however he is a well-informed diplomat and knows what he is speaking about. In early March he will be visiting the conflict zone.

On the other hand, several similar ‘optimistic forecasts’ were made during the past year, and none of them came true. Even US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made a statement last spring concerning a possible settlement of the Karabakh conflict ‘within the coming months’.

Turks had made their own predictions concerning the meeting in Sochi. Exact dates were not mentioned but opinions were expressed about Moscow’s hidden agenda.

“In the event of a positive settlement of the Karabakh issue Russia will be linked with its ally Armenia through Azerbaijan thereby strengthening its [Russia’s] geopolitical positions,” reports the Turkish Hurriyet daily. “Then new energy routes will open up for Moscow to deliver Central Asian energy resources to the world market, hence will strengthen Moscow’s geo-economic stand in the world energy market.”

Apparently, the newspaper does not doubt that the initiative on Karabakh conflict settlement is gradually passing from the Minsk group mediators to Russia, which has, so far, arranged and held four of such meetings.

The participants of the meeting reported two main pieces of news following the Sochi meeting.

The first piece of news is that the sides agreed the preamble of the Madrid document on the basic principles of settlement for the Karabakh conflict, in particular, the principle of nations’ right to self-determination in the conflict settlement was prioritized.

Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov refused to tell the press the exact content of the document.

At the same time he stated that “the negotiations change their course from abstract to more concrete and all the proposals developed within the framework of the OSCE Minsk Group were discussed in detail during the meeting.”

Consequently, official Baku, too, approved of the priority of the principle of nations’ right to self-determination in the conflict settlement.

But, there is a catch here.

The concept of ‘a nation’s right to self-determination’ has been given different interpretations in international practice and suggests a wide sector of applicability – from autonomous formation as part of the given state to granting political independence to a “disputed land”.

In particular official Baku constantly voices its eagerness to grant “broad autonomy” to Nagorno-Karabakh, hence looks at “a nation’s right to self-determination” from that perspective.

The second piece of news of the Sochi meeting is that Nagorno-Karabakh, at some point, will join the negotiating process. News agencies report that this point is also included in the agreed preamble.

However, this also leaves room for questions, since by “representation of Nagorno-Karabakh” Azerbaijan, first of all, implies the so-called “Government of Nagorno-Karabakh in Exile” functioning in Baku.

The French co-chair of the OSCE Minsk Group Bernard Fassier stated earlier in Baku that “by saying that Karabakh has to participate in the negotiating process we refer not only to the Armenians currently residing in Nagorno-Karabakh but also the Azeri population that used to live there. Both communities have to participate in the negotiations, as this is about the terms of their future co-existence in Nagorno-Karabakh.”

To sum up, in Sochi the sides officially reconciled certain principles. However, each of the sides has its own interpretation of those principles.