MORE ARMENIAN-AZERI SKIRMISHES REPORTED
By Emil Danielyan

Radio Liberty. Czech Rep.
March 30 2006

Armenia and Azerbaijan have reported fresh exchanges of fire between
their forces which have disrupted a regular international monitoring
of ceasefire around Nagorno-Karabakh and killed at least one soldier.

The Baku-based ANS television said on Thursday that an Azerbaijani
serviceman was shot dead in the westernmost section of the heavily
militarized Armenian-Azerbaijani frontier. The Azerbaijani Defense
Ministry confirmed the report, alleging an Armenian truce violation.

There was no immediate comment from the Armenian side.

The incident was reported from an area that has seen an upsurge in
cross-border skirmishes this month. Both conflicting parties have
reported casualties among their troops, blaming each other for the
fighting that followed the collapse of a crucial Armenian-Azerbaijani
summit held in France on February 10-11.

Tension has also risen along the main Armenian-Azerbaijani line of
contact east of Nagorno-Karabakh. The latest Azerbaijani casualty
was reported the day after a disruption of ceasefire monitoring
by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe in the
northeastern section of the Karabakh frontline.

The Armenian Defense Ministry said on Wednesday that OSCE field
observers accompanied by Karabakh officials came under Azerbaijani
gunfire as they were about to carry out what has become a routine
procedure. “Due to a lack of security guarantees from the Azerbaijani
side, Ambassador Andrzej Kasprzyk postponed the monitoring,” the
ministry spokesman, Colonel Seyran Shahsuvarian, told RFE/RL, referring
to the longtime head of the OSCE military mission in the conflict zone.

The Azerbaijani side claimed the opposite, however. The Interfax
news agency quoted an Azerbaijani military spokesman as saying that
Kasprzyk “heard shots fired from the Armenian section of the border
and ordered that monitoring be cancelled.” The OSCE official has not
yet commented on the conflicting statements from Baku and Yerevan.

Meanwhile, Azerbaijan’s dovish Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov was
quoted by ANS as saying that the latest fighting only demonstrates
that the Karabakh conflict is far from being frozen. “Azerbaijani and
Armenian soldiers are killed every week,” Mammadyarov said, adding
that the conflict should therefore be resolved “as soon as possible.”