How far it was thrown back is still unknown, but one thing is clear: the visit of the Ambassadors of Armenia and Azerbaijan to the RF, Stepanakert, Yerevan and Baku showed, first of all, the weakness of the so-called "national diplomacy" and, secondly, the tough position of not only the NKR leadership, but its people who will agree to no nothing but the independent status of their country, a position Baku should have realized still 15 years ago and a stance we have been repeatedly writing about. If we analyze the visits of the representatives of Armenian and Azerbaijani communities, unfortunately, we have to state that the Armenian side did not conduct in the best possible way. Judge yourselves: beginning with the fact that the opening of the visit was wrapped up in mysteriousness and concluding with complete absence of commentaries on the purpose of the visit, did not add to the respect the NKR people pay to the ambassadors of "good will". Moreover, it was exactly Stepanakert that came out with sharp criticism of the initiative, which, by the way, couldn't be observed during their first visit back in 2007. Who is to blame for the failure of the mostly acceptable initiative is still subject to investigation, but let us deliver rebukes to both the organizers and the participants of this badly staged performance. For some reason it so happened that Yerevan proved to be content with the results of "national diplomacy" and all the Armenian media outlets harmoniously cited the Azeri representatives, who were not stingy of commentaries that, in the essence, came to one and the same idea: you cannot go far from Baku, anyway you are going to return…

We shall not dwell on the outrage about "the absence of the border between Azerbaijan and Karabakh". But this is the outer side of the visit. Much more serious is the fact that Nagorno Karabakh is not yet recognized and, obviously, still long won't be recognized as a conflict side that holds voting rights. This was quite clearly put by OSCE Minsk Group Russian Co-Chair Yuri Merzlyakov. "Representatives of Nagorno-Karabakh can participate in the negotiations only upon coordination of the basic principles," the Russian diplomat said. In reality it indicates only one thing: Nagorno Karabakh can be simply put before a fact, i.e. before a signed "framework agreement". Now there is only one question to be decided by NKR: to declare her disagreement or to immediately dissociate from Yerevan as from a "guarantor of safety". However, neither of the variants will result in anything good either for Stepanakert or for Yerevan , and it will come out as in the Armenian saying: "One Armenian is few but two are many".

Perhaps, it is necessary to note that representatives of different European structures and regional organizations will be hurrying to Karabakh from the spring of the current year. Even Turks attempted to arrive in Stepanakert, but all of them were skillfully disallowed. According to a high-ranking diplomat of NKR Foreign Ministry, the pressure on Karabakh is stronger than on Yerevan , because the mediators and key regional players know that the essential thing in the agreement that sooner or later will be signed is the signature of an NKR representative, without which no agreement will ever work. As an example the Bishkek Protocol is given, which bears the signatures of the NKR and Azerbaijani Defense Ministers.

Reasoning from the recent developments in the region and the course of the world to multi-polarity, which can be proved by the failure of the G8 summit in L'Aquila , Italy , serious developments await us in the regulation process. Most likely, changes will occur some time in autumn and, quite probably, will end in a second Maindorf Declaration, i.e. in a simple memorandum of understanding, which is a widely-used practice in diplomacy, when it is necessary to say everything and nothing at the same time. Such is the reality today - fortune telling on coffee grounds, mutually exclusive statements of Mathew Bryza and acknowledgement of the excellent knowledge of the Russian language and literature by Bernard Fassier will continue until the Madrid principles are introduced. But to the honour of the OSCE Minsk Group we'll note that for 15 years already it maintains the ceasefire regime. And let us agree that it's not little work.