ARMENIAN GENERAL DOWNPLAYS EXCHANGES OF FIRE WITH AZERBAIJAN

Hayots Ashkar, Yerevan,
30 Sep 06 p 5

"Negative developments were not observed"

An interview with Chief of the General Staff Col-Gen
Mikayel Arutyunyan. He comments on present situation on the
Armenian-Azerbaijani contact line.

[Ayots Ashkar correspondent] Mr General, what is today’s situation
at the contact line taking into account the fact that an Armenia
servicemen was killed recently?

[Mikayel Arutyunyan] In general, the situation is calm on the contact
line. There were no big clashes, but unfortunately single shots
can still be heard. And one of such shots has recently killed our
warrant officer. But the Azerbaijani party should understand that
our tolerance has its limits. A deterioration of the situation will
undoubtedly result in an appropriate response by Armenia and should
that happen they will also have casualties.

But in general, there are no major negative developments on the contact
line. Our and Azerbaijani engineers carry out their work. At any rate,
we are getting ready to thwart any kind of provocation. By this I do
not mean large-scale offensive operations about which top Azerbaijani
military officials like to speak.

[Correspondent] Earlier, Azerbaijan used to move their positions closer
to ours. Then the process was stopped. What is the situation today?

[Arutyunyan] Such actions were not observed in 2006. Actually they
were trying to push their positions forward and as a result of those
actions they had a serious number of victims not because of the shots
of our snipers but because of being blown up by their own landmines.

The reason is that the area between our positions was mined by both
sides long ago.

I think that this should be taken into account by Azerbaijan and
such initiatives should be abandoned pending reaching a political
settlement of the Nagornyy Karabakh conflict.

[Correspondent] Did the OSCE monitoring group register any cease-fire
violations by Azerbaijan?

[Arutyunyan] The OSCE monitoring group visits the front-line from
time to time from both sides. Of course, they do register the cases
of cease-fire violations and take measures. Let us remind that there
was a case when the monitoring group visited the front-line from the
on the side of Karabakh and Azerbaijanis opened fire in the direction
of the OSCE monitors. Fortunately, there were no victims.