Baku condemns deadly Armenia provocation on state border

By Azernews

By Vugar Khalilov

Baku has strongly condemned Armenia's latest military provocation committed on the state border with Azerbaijan.

In a statement posted on its website on January 11, the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry said: “We strongly condemn the continuation of military provocations by the Armenian side.”

The ministry's statement came after Azerbaijani soldier Ayaz Nazarov was killed in an Armenian provocation in the direction of Kalbajar region of the Azerbaijan-Armenia state border on January 11.

The Foreign Ministry stressed that the Armenian military and political leadership is directly responsible for the escalation in the region.

“By committing another bloody provocation on the state border, instead of taking steps to normalize relations between the two countries, the Armenian military-political leadership is directly responsible for the aggravation of the situation in the region,” the statement added.

The worst escalation of tension was registered on the Azerbaijani-Armenian state border on November 16, 2021. As a result, seven Azerbaijani servicemen were killed and 10 were wounded during military operations in Kalbajar and Lachin on the state border.

The trilateral ceasefire deal signed by the Azerbaijani, Russian and Armenian leaders on November 10, 2020, ended the three-decade conflict over Azerbaijan’s Karabakh region which along with the seven adjacent regions came under the occupation of Armenian armed forces in the war in the early 1990s.

On January 11, 2021, the Azerbaijani, Russian and Armenian leaders signed the second statement since the end of the 44-day war. The newly-signed statement was set to implement clause 9 of the November 2020 statement related to the unblocking of all economic and transport communications in the region.

On November 26, 2021, the Azerbaijani, Russian and Armenian leaders signed a statement and agreed on a number of issues, including the demarcation and delimitation of the Azerbaijani-Armenian border by late 2021, some points related to humanitarian issues and the issue of unblocking of transport corridors which applies to the railway and to automobile communications.

On December 14, 2021, during the Brussels meeting, organized between Azerbaijani and Armenian leaders at the initiative of European Council President Charles Michel, the sides reaffirmed their commitment to the conditions agreed in the Sochi meeting.

Both sides agreed to establish a temporary working group on the delimitation of the Armenian-Azerbaijani border.

The issue of demining the liberated territories of Azerbaijan was also brought up on the agenda, and the European Union's readiness to provide technical assistance to Azerbaijan in this regard was underlined at the meeting.