Azernews.Az

BAKU – OSCE mediators brokering settlement to the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict over Nagorno Karabakh have voiced "deep concern" by reports of cease-fire violations on the frontline before and after Saturday’s talks between the two countries’ leaders in Sochi, Russia.

"Such senseless acts, if confirmed, would contravene the commitment of the parties to refrain from the use of force and to seek a peaceful settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict," the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs - Bernard Fassier of France, Robert Bradtke of the United States, and Igor Popov of Russia – said in a statement issued on Wednesday in Vilnius.

Armenian troops on Tuesday killed a nine-year-old child with sniper bullets in Azerbaijan’s frontline Aghdam region.

Azerbaijani Defense Ministry spokesman Eldar Sabiroghlu has said Armenia tries to derail negotiations by some provocations either before or after every round of high-level talks on settling the Nagorno Karabakh conflict. These attempts continued during the Sochi meeting, as Armenian armed forces violated the ceasefire that is in place between the two countries in ten areas of the frontline.

The Minsk Group co-chairs have asked the OSCE chairman’s personal envoy Andrzej Kasprzyk to carry out an immediate investigation with the participation of all sides, as agreed in the March 5 joint statement issued in Sochi by Presidents Dmitry Medvedev, Ilham Aliyev, and Serzh Sargsyan. The co-chairs will travel next week to the region, where they will call upon the parties to cooperate fully with the investigation.

The mediators strongly condemned any loss of life, and urged all sides to exercise restraint, respect the 1994 cease-fire, and fulfill their obligations undertaken in Astrakhan in late October 2010 during the presidents’ talks and in Sochi earlier this month.

Presidents Aliyev, Sargsyan and Medvedev issued a joint statement following the meeting in Sochi, committing to resolve their differences peacefully, and to implement fully an agreement on the exchange of prisoners of war made last October. They also agreed to investigate ceasefire violations under the aegis of the OSCE.

Azerbaijan and Armenia have been locked in conflict for two decades. Armenian armed forces have occupied over 20 percent of Azerbaijan's internationally recognized territory since a war in the early 1990s. Years of peace talks have been largely fruitless so far.