Azernews.Az

By Sara Rajabova

Azerbaijan's Prime Minister Artur Rasizade has presided over a meeting held by Defense Ministry.

The meeting attended by defense officials discussed the instructions given by the Supreme Commander-in-Chief of Azerbaijani Armed Forces, President Ilham Aliyev on the necessity of modernizing army infrastructures.

The meeting noted that Azerbaijan's defense budget for 2014 is set at 2.95 billion manats, or 14.7 percent of the total budget expenditure. The budget is intended to strengthen national security and defense capability and setting up an appropriate material-technical base.

The defense industry has significantly developed in Azerbaijan in recent years. In 2013 the volume of defense production in Azerbaijan increased by 3.7 percent compared to the previous year. Meanwhile, the number of defense products exceeded 900.

During the meeting, the participants also praised the combat readiness and morale of the Azerbaijani armed forces.

Recently the situation on the contact line of Armenian and Azerbaijani troops has deteriorated. In recent days the Armenian armed forces violated ceasefire over 1000 times.

The Defense Ministry said on January 29 that the ceasefire has been violated on the contact line of Armenian and Azerbaijani troops in different positions 250 times a day.

As a result of the unceasing armistice breaches by the Armenian troops, two officers of the Azerbaijani armed forces were killed by a sniper.

Also, a resident of the village near the frontline, was wounded last week, as a result of the Armenian armed forces' shelling of the villages located near the contact line of Armenian and Azerbaijani troops in the Tovuz region.

Armenia occupied over 20 percent of Azerbaijan's internationally recognized territory, including Nagorno-Karabakh and seven adjacent regions, after laying territorial claims against its South Caucasus neighbor that had caused a lengthy war in the early 1990s.

The UN Security Council's four resolutions on Armenian withdrawal have not been enforced to this day.

Peace talks, mediated by Russia, France and the US and the OSCE Minsk Group are underway on the basis of a peaceful outline -called Madrid Principle-proposed by the Minsk Group co-chairs. The negotiations have been largely fruitless so far.