From Hillary Rodham Clinton’s book “Hard Choices”
“On October 9, I flew to Zurich to witness the accord signing alongside the Foreign Ministers of France, Russia, and Switzerland and the EU High Representative. The next afternoon I left my hotel and headed to the University of Zurich for the ceremony. But there was a problem. Nalbandian, the Armenian Minister, was balking. He was worried about what Davutoğlu planned to say at the signing and suddenly was refusing to leave the hotel. It seemed as if months of careful negotiations might fall apart. My motorcade turned around and raced back to Zurich’s Dolder Grand Hotel. While I waited in the car, Phil Gordon went upstairs along with the lead Swiss negotiator to find Nalbandian and take him to the signing ceremony. But he wouldn’t budge. Phil came back downstairs to report and joined me in the car, which was now parked behind the hotel. I started working the phones. On one cell I dialed Nalbandian, and I got Davutoğlu on a second line. We went back and forth for an hour, trying to bridge the gap and coax Nalbandian out of his room. ‘This is too important, this has to be seen through, we have come too far,’ I told them,” Clinton recounts in her book.
“Finally I went upstairs to talk to Nalbandian in person. What if we simply canceled the speaking portionof the event? Sign the document, make no statements, and leave. Both sides agreed, and Nalbandian at last emerged. We walked downstairs, and he got in my sedan to drive to the university. It took another hour and a half of hand-holding and arm-twisting at the site to get them to actually walk onstage. We were three hours late, but at least we were there. We held the expedited signing ceremony, and then, with a huge sense of relief, everyone left as fast as they could.”
