BAKU, STEPANAKERT ACCUSE EACH OTHER OF THWARTING BORDER MONITORING

Interfax News Agency
Russia & CIS Military Newswire
March 29, 2006 Wednesday 4:58 PM MSK

An operation to monitor the border between Azerbaijan and the
self-proclaimed republic of Nagorno-Karabakh will not take place
on Wednesday.

The measure was called off “after shots were fired in the Karabakh
village of Karmiravan, which is currently under Azerbaijan’s
occupation,” a spokesman for the Nagorno-Karabakh Foreign Ministry
told Interfax.

“Three shots fired from automatic weapons were heard by a group of OSCE
observers led by the OSCE chairman-in-office’s personal representative,
Ambassador Andrzej Kasprzyk, and officials of Nagorno- Karabakh’s
Defense and Foreign Ministries who were accompanying the mission,”
he said.

Kasprzyk decided to cancel today’s monitoring due to the absence of
security guarantees, the spokesman said.

Azeri Deputy Ministry spokesman Ilgar Verdiyev has accused Armenia
of thwarting the effort.

“During monitoring preparations, the OSCE chairman-in-office’s personal
representative Andrzej Kasprzyk heard shots fired at the Armenian
section of the border and ordered that monitoring be cancelled,”
Verdiyev told Interfax-Azerbaijan.