Azernews.Az

By Sara Rajabova

Showing obvious negligence to international rules and norms, Armenia doesn’t even hesitate to fire at the international representatives that visited contact line between Armenian-Azerbaijani troops to monitor the situation on the ground.

Under the mandate of the Personal Representative of the OSCE Chairperson-in-Office, the line of contact between Azerbaijani and Armenian troops on the territory of Azerbaijan’s Tartar region was being monitored on October 27.

The Armenian military again shelled the OSCE representatives during the regular monitoring on the frontline.

During the monitoring, OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs Igor Popov (Russia), James Warlick (US), Pierre Andrieu (France) and Personal Representative of the OSCE Chairperson-in-Office Andrzej Kasprzyk crossed from the opposite side of the contact line to that controlled by the Azerbaijani armed forces, the Azerbaijani defense ministry reported.

Later on, the co-chairs met with the local command staff and executive authorities at a field briefing.

Despite an agreement on the adherence to the ceasefire regime, machine gun fire from enemy positions toward Azerbaijani positions was seen, according to the ministry.

The ministry said that the shootings immediately ceased after intervention from the co-chairs.

This is not the only case when the Armenian military has breached the ceasefire regime during the OSCE monitoring.

Armenian troops fired at OSCE representatives as well as Azerbaijani positions during a monitoring mission on the contact line earlier this year.

In late October 2014, despite being informed about the OSCE monitoring operation, Armenian troops continued their provocative moves on the contact line.

These regular monitoring missions don’t yield any results as the Armenian forces continue to resort to sabotage and provocation along the contact line as they have done for nearly 25 years.

Frequent ceasefire violations aggravate the situation, forcing the Azerbaijani Army to retaliate.

As top Azerbaijani officials have stated, the Azerbaijani Army stands ready to liberate the occupied lands by the military means if necessary.

Armenia and Azerbaijan fought a lengthy war that ended with the signing of a fragile ceasefire in 1994. More than 20,000 Azerbaijanis were killed and over 1 million were displaced as a result of the large-scale hostilities. Since the war, the Armenian armed forces have occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan's territory, including Nagorno-Karabakh and seven surrounding regions.

Armenia continues the occupation in defiance of four UN Security Council resolutions calling for immediate and unconditional withdrawal of armed forces.

Peace talks brokered by mediators from Russia, France and the U.S. have produced no results so far.

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Sara Rajabova is AzerNews’ staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @SaraRajabova

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