Azernews.Az

By Gunay Camal

The OSCE has held its first monitoring following the escalation of the situation on the contact line of Armenian and Azerbaijani troops on May 11, and revealed no violation for now.

The monitoring held on May 11 along the contact line between Azerbaijani and Armenian troops has passed without incidents, Azerbaijani Defense Ministry reported.

The monitoring was held under the mandate of the OSCE chairperson-in-office personal representative on the contact line to the west of the Tapgaragoyunlu village of Azerbaijan's Goranboy region.

Azerbaijan and Armenia for over two decades have been locked in conflict, which emerged over Armenian territorial claims. Since the 1990s war, Armenian armed forces have occupied over 20 percent of Azerbaijan's internationally recognized territory, including Nagorno-Karabakh and seven adjacent regions. The UN Security Council has adopted four resolutions on Armenian withdrawal, but they have not been enforced to this day.

A precarious cease-fire was signed in 1994. However, the Armenian forces commit armistice breaches on the frontline almost every day.

The OSCE mission regularly holds monitoring on the contact line of Armenian and Azerbaijani troops, but has revealed no incident even during the escalation of tension between conflicting sides.

Tapgaragoyunlu village of Azerbaijan's Goranboy region is among the frontline villages mostly suffering from the Armenian aggression. About 100 homes and facilities were destroyed here while villager Allahverdiyev Abbas, 42, was wounded during the Armenian provocation on April 2.

Experts say that the OSCE mission failed to regulate accurately the situation since the first days of their activity, claiming that if such an assessment had been made several years ago, Armenia would not have dared to violate the ceasefire and target civilians.

Despite the facts that it came under the fire of the Armenian bullets for several times, the OSCE hasn’t taken a decisive action to avoid such situation.

For unknown reasons the OSCE mission finds it difficult to determine the direction of the shooting, even at times when they faced Armenian provocation during the monitoring process.

Now when the victims of frequent Armenian shelling are obvious it is high time for the monitoring group to change its mechanism of detecting the violations on the frontline of the hot conflict -- just to defend the innocent Azerbaijani civilians in nearby areas.

---

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz