President Serzh Sargsyan was scheduled to hold a head-to-head meeting with his Azerbaijani counterpart Ilham Aliyev in the Russian capital Moscow on Friday afternoon amid growing international hopes and, apparently pressures, for the two parties to move closer to a settlement of the long-running Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

Last week, the leaders of the United States, France and Russia that jointly co-lead the international mediation effort in the conflict urged Sargsyan and Aliyev “to resolve the few differences remaining between them and finalize their agreement on these Basic Principles, which will outline a comprehensive settlement.”

Yet, Sargsyan faced opposition from at least two political parties at home demanding a change of tack on Karabakh.

The Armenian Revolutionary Federation (Dashnaktsutyun) indicated earlier this week it wanted the foreign minister to step down. It also dropped hints that a failure to change policy on Karabakh might entail their demand of the resignation of Sargsyan himself.

Among Dashnaktsutyun’s demands is that Sargsyan should not sign any document based on the so-called Madrid principles of settlement proposed by the Minsk Group of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). In particular, these principles imply the withdrawal of Karabakh Armenian forces from the districts outside Nagorno-Karabakh proper that they currently control as a buffer zone as well as an indefinitely delayed status for Nagorno-Karabakh to be decided in the future “through a legally binding expression of will.”

“The president still has an opportunity to make drastic changes in the situation and, most importantly, not to sign the document that is being proposed,” said Armen Rustamian, a senior member of Dashnaktsutyun, at a press conference on Thursday.

Heritage, another opposition party in Armenia’s parliament, also urged Sargsyan, through a senior member of its parliamentary faction, not to sign any documents based on the so-called Madrid principles.

Also, eight political parties in Karabakh, including local Dashnaktsutyun, issued a statement on Thursday calling for Stepanakert’s greater role in the continuing negotiations with Azerbaijan and condemning all attempts to put the internationally unrecognized republic’s security at risk. They said all efforts to resolve the conflict without Stepanakert were “doomed to failure.”

The statement echoed the concerns of Karabakh’s public at large as well as leadership that presented similar claims through its foreign ministry earlier this week.

Meanwhile, on Wednesday, President Sargsyan stressed that no document will be signed during his two-day working visit to Moscow on July 17-18.

And on Thursday, Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandyan traveled to Karabakh where he assured the local authorities that “Armenia cannot ignore Karabakh’s opinion.”
“Armenia cannot make any agreement without the approval of the people and leadership of Karabakh. And my being here today being here is anther proof of that,” Yerevan’s top diplomat said in Stepanakert.