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OSCE Decries Azerbaijan-Armenia Tensions

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  • OSCE Decries Azerbaijan-Armenia Tensions

    OSCE DECRIES AZERBAIJAN-ARMENIA TENSIONS
    By JIM HEINTZ

    Associated Press Online
    September 3, 2012 Monday 7:03 PM GMT

    International negotiators say Azerbaijan's pardoning of a military
    officer who murdered an Armenian officer has harmed attempts to
    establish peace between the countries.

    Azerbaijan in turn strongly defended the move, saying the pardon
    of Ramil Safarov is a consequence of Armenian occupation of a part
    of Azerbaijan.

    The Nagorno-Karabakh region of Azerbaijan and some adjacent territory
    has been under the control of Armenian troops and local ethnic Armenian
    forces since a 1994 cease-fire ended a six-year war that killed an
    estimated 30,000 people and drove about 1 million from their homes.

    Negotiators from Russia, the United States and France under the
    auspices of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe
    have led efforts since then to find a resolution to the conflict,
    but with little visible result.

    The tensions rose sharply last week after Hungary repatriated Safarov,
    who had been sentenced to life imprisonment for the 2004 axe murder
    of Armenian Lt. Gurgen Makarian while both were in Hungary on a NATO
    language-training course.

    Hungary said Azerbaijan promised that Safarov would serve his sentence
    in a local prison, but he received a presidential pardon hours after
    returning and later was promoted from lieutenant to major.

    An outraged Armenian President Serge Sarkisian broke diplomatic
    relations with Hungary and said Armenia was willing to resume fighting
    against Azerbaijan.

    Reigniting the frozen conflict would be of serious concern to Russia,
    which borders Azerbaijan and has a military base in Armenia, as well as
    the West. A major pipeline through Azerbaijan transports Caspian Sea
    oil to Turkey and both countries have potential strategic importance
    because they border Iran.

    The co-chairs of the "Minsk Group," the troika negotiating on
    Nagorno-Karabakh, met in Paris with the Armenian foreign minister on
    Sunday and his Azerbaijani counterpart on Monday.

    The co-chairs "expressed their deep concern and regret for the damage
    the pardon and any attempts to glorify the crime have done to the
    peace process and trust between the sides," an OSCE statement said.

    Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Elmar Mamedyarov also spoke by telephone
    with U.S. Deputy Secretary of State William Burns on Monday, ministry
    spokesman Elman Abdullayev said.

    Mamedyarov "underlined that the question of Ramil Safarov must not be
    looked at outside the context of the fact of the occupation, because
    it is a consequence of this Armenian aggression," Abdullayev said.

    Armenian Foreign Minister Edvard Nalbandian in turn said the
    "international society cannot tolerate the continuation of Azerbaijan's
    adventurist policy under the cover of the negotiations process."

    Separately from the OSCE statement, Russia's Foreign Ministry condemned
    both Hungary's release of Safarov and Azerbaijan's pardon of him.

    "We believe that these actions of Azerbaijani as well as Hungarian
    authorities contradict internationally brokered efforts, of the
    OSCE's Minsk group in particular, to ease tensions in the region,"
    the ministry said.

    The White House also criticized the decision to free Safarov.

    During his trial in Budapest, Safarov claimed that the Nagorno-Karabakh
    conflict was at the root of his actions and that he killed Markarian
    while the victim was sleeping after the Armenian repeatedly provoked
    and ridiculed him.

    ---

    Aida Sultanova in Baku, Azerbaijan, and Avet Demourian in Yerevan,
    Armenia, contributed to this report

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