Azernews.Az

By Sara Rajabova

The gross violation of relations between soldiers recruited from Armenia and Armenian residents of Nagorno-Karabakh was the major reason for the death of Armenian soldiers there.

Azerbaijani Defense Ministry spokesman Vagif Darghahli made the remark while talking to local media on January 21.

He rejected media reports about an act of sabotage committed by Azerbaijani raiding party through violating ceasefire on line of contact and serious losses of Armenian units. "This is Yerevan's disinformation and provocation," he said.

"We are not surprised on threatening statements of the Armenian Defense Ministry following this information," Darghahli said. "Armenia spreads news about the Azerbaijani Army's launching of an active combat operations to distract the attention of its people, each time the massive discontent occur against the Armenian government,"

Darghahli went on to say that the Armenian military-political regime, panicked by opposition rally of 10,000 of dissatisfied people on January 18 against the pension reform, anew makes a psychological impact on its people to divert the public attention from these actions.

"The losses in the Armenian army, as Armenia's Defense Minister Seyran Ohanyan said on January 16, are based on the violence, poor discipline, and unpleasant mutual relations among the personnel. The reason of death of Armenian soldiers in military units is poor discipline and gross violation of mutual relations between military officers and soldiers, as well as between conscripts from Armenia and Armenian residents of Nagorno-Karabakh," Darghahli noted.

Azerbaijani Defense Ministry issued a statement on January 20 to reject the Armenian media allegations accusing Azerbaijan of sabotage, and called it another provocation.

Armenian media claimed that an Azerbaijani raiding party committed an act of sabotage on the line of contact in the area of Azerbaijan's occupied Nagorno-Karabakh region, accusing them of killing an Armenian soldier.

The statement said there has been no incident on the contact line of the troops and the Armenian media allegations are disinformation and provocation.

Meanwhile, Armenian defense minister's press secretary Artsrun Hovhannisyan warned that the Azerbaijani side will not remain unpunished.

The Armenian media's disinformation and provocations are mainly assessed as attempts to break the negotiation process on the peaceful settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

Azerbaijani and Armenian Foreign Ministers are scheduled to meet in Paris this week.

The ministers met previously in the framework of the 20th OSCE Ministerial Council meeting held in Kyiv on December 5.

The heads of the OSCE Minsk Group co-chair delegations and Azerbaijani and Armenian Foreign Ministers voiced commitment to working together for a peaceful resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

The Nagorno-Karabakh conflict emerged in 1988 when Armenia made territorial claims against Azerbaijan. Since a lengthy war in the early 1990s that displaced over one million Azerbaijanis, Armenian armed forces have occupied over 20 percent of Azerbaijan's internationally recognized territory, including Nagorno-Karabakh and seven adjacent regions.

The UN Security Council's four resolutions on Armenian withdrawal have not been enforced to this day.

Peace talks, mediated by Russia, France and the U.S. through the OSCE Minsk Group, are underway on the basis of a peace outline proposed by the Minsk Group co-chairs and dubbed the Madrid Principles. The negotiations have been largely fruitless so far.