MONITORING ON AZERI-ARMENIAN CONTACT LINE CANCELLED AS TRUCE VIOLATED

Interfax-AVN military news agency website, Moscow
29 Mar 06

Stepanakert /Baku, 29 March: An operation to monitor the border between
Azerbaijan and the self-proclaimed republic of Nagornyy Karabakh will
not take place on Wednesday [29 March].

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 Nagornyy 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 Nagornyy Karabakh’s
Defence 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.

Azerbaijani Deputy Ministry spokesman Ilqar 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.