Armenia kills Azerbaijani soldier ahead of Munich Security Conference

By Abdul Kerimkhanov

The Armenian Armed Forces killed an Azerbaijani soldier by a sniper on February 15, on the eve of the meeting between the two countries’ leaders at the Munich Security Conference, Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Leyla Abdullayeva has said.

The killing of Seymur Alasgarov, the soldier of the Azerbaijan army, shows that Armenia “continuously and consistently, intends to jeopardize and even undermine the ongoing peace process under the auspices of OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs”, Abdullayev said in the statement published on the Foreign Ministry’s official website on February 15.

The ministry spokesperson reminded that another Azerbaijani soldier was killed by Armenian forces ahead of the meeting of the foreign ministers of two countries in Geneva in late January.

Abdullayeva emphasized that all responsibility for the provocation, which serves to rising tension, lies with Armenia.

Earlier, on February 15, Azerbaijani Defense Ministry reported the killing of soldier Alasgarov on the line of contact of troops saying that the Armenian side bears the entire responsibility for the escalation of the situation in the front line.

Armenia and Azerbaijan are locked in a conflict over Azerbaijan’s Nagorno-Karabakh region, which along with seven other regions were occupied by Armenian forces in a war in the early 1990s. Around one million Azerbaijanis were displaced as a result of the large-scale hostilities that were started by the Armenian forces due to territorial claims against Baku.

A temporary cease-fire agreement was signed between the countries in 1994, however a final peace deal has not been reached yet. Peace negotiations mediated by the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs have yielded no results to this date.

Since 1992, negotiations have been underway for a peaceful settlement of the conflict within the framework of the OSCE Minsk Group. In 1993, the UN Security Council adopted four resolutions (822, 853, 874 and 884) on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. However, due to the unconstructiveness of Armenia, they still remain on paper.

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Abdul Kerimkhanov is AzerNews’ staff journalist, follow him on Twitter: @AbdulKerim94 

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