Visits of OSCE Minsk Group and CiO mean nothing to Baku: snipers remain in their positions

PanARMENIAN.Net - All this is true, but the OSCE Chairman-in-Office is, apparently, a random person in the Karabakh conflict settlement, as he is repeating the same words as his predecessor, Foreign Minister of Kazakhstan Kanat Saudabayev. One may assume that due to their status Ažubalis and all others should have at least minimum information about the conflict. It could well be that they have even more information that we fancy, but in actual fact, for some reason it all comes down to empty words and calls for nothing. Calls urging withdrawal of the snipers cannot convince anyone, especially in Yerevan. Probably Ažubalis will say the same thing in Baku, but we all can guess how it will all be interpreted by the Azeri media.

But one thing is certain: the main party to the conflict, namely the Republic of Artsakh, has already stated that the proposal of the OSCE Chairman to unilaterally withdraw Armenian snipers from the front line of the Karabakh conflict zone is totally unacceptable. According to President Bako Sahakyan, Armenian side has declared its readiness to remove snipers from the front line. “However, for unknown reasons, these proposals were not supported by the Azerbaijani side, which proves that Azerbaijan is not interested in easing the tension on the border. When Mr. Ažubalis suggested unilateral withdrawal of Armenian snipers from the front line, I drew the OSCE CiO’s attention to recent incident on the contact line resulting in the death of an Armenian soldier in an Azeri attack,” said President Sahakyan.

The next round of tension on the contact line will probably come after Nowruz, though Islamic holidays and memorable days in general do not play any role for Baku. Sometimes it seems that Azerbaijan lives in a kind of virtual world, where there is only he, the Aliyev clan, oil, and, of course, Karabakh “with a high degree of autonomy”.