NAGORNYY KARABAKH REPUBLIC CONDEMNS AZERI TRUCE VIOLATIONS

Public Television of Armenia, Yerevan
30 Mar 06

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Nagornyy Karabakh Republic (NKR)
has issued a statement condemning the truce violation by Azerbaijan
during the OSCE monitoring on 28 March.

To recap, during the routine monitoring by the OSCE monitoring
mission on 28 March east of the village of Seysulan in Martakert
[Askaran] District of the NKR, the units of the Azerbaijani armed
forces violated the cease-fire, opening fire on the NKR armed forces.

In order to ensure security of the monitoring mission, the OSCE
chairman-in-office’s personal representative, Andrzej Kasprzyk,
decided to cancel the monitoring.

Drawing attention of the international community to the frequent
violations by Azerbaijani military units of the contact line between
the Azerbaijani and Karabakh armed forces, as well as to cases of
shooting during the monitoring, the NKR Foreign Ministry considers
necessary to declare that actions of that kind are a direct consequence
of the Azerbaijani leadership’s ongoing bellicose rhetoric which has
not been properly assessed by interested states and organizations,
the NKR Foreign Ministry statement reads.

Stepanakert [Xankandi] considers that the mediators’ attempts to make
all sides of the Nagornyy Karabakh conflict equally accountable for
cease-fire violations create conditions for Azerbaijan’s impunity
as a real culprit of [truce] violations, which is absolutely
unacceptable. In this connection, the NKR Foreign Ministry considers
that such position may hamper the balance [of forces] and lead to the
destabilization of the situation in the entire South Caucasus region.