Baku, Azerbaijan, Apr. 18
By Anakhanum Khidayatova - Trend:
Mostly Armenia is guilty in continuation of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, Sergey Markov, the Russian president's trustee, the member of the Russian Public Chamber and political analyst, told reporters Apr. 18 in Baku.
"The recent clashes in Azerbaijan's occupied Nagorno-Karabakh region were expected, and there are several reasons for that," he said. "In contrast to other conflicts, there were no peacekeepers on the border, and not the conflict, but the negotiations were frozen and the OSCE Minsk Group is partly guilty of that," Markov said.
He said each co-chair country of OSCE Minsk Group has a large Armenian diaspora, which makes it hard to influence Armenia.
On the night of April 2, 2016, all the frontier positions of Azerbaijan were subjected to heavy fire from the Armenian side, which used large-caliber weapons, mortars and grenade launchers. The armed clashes resulted in deaths and injuries among the Azerbaijani population. Azerbaijan responded with a counter-attack, which led to liberation of several strategic heights and settlements.
Military operations were stopped on the line of contact between Azerbaijani and Armenian armies on Apr. 5 at 12:00 (UTC/GMT + 4 hours) with the consent of the sides, Azerbaijan's Defense Ministry earlier said. Ignoring the agreement, the Armenian side again started violating the ceasefire.
The conflict between the two South Caucasus countries began in 1988 when Armenia made territorial claims against Azerbaijan. As a result of the ensuing war, in 1992 Armenian armed forces occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan, including the Nagorno-Karabakh region and seven surrounding districts. The 1994 ceasefire agreement was followed by peace negotiations. Armenia has not yet implemented four UN Security Council resolutions on withdrawal of its armed forces from the Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding districts.
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