Armenia unilaterally rejected the appeal of the OSCE Minsk Group on the observance of the ceasefire during the holidays of Nowruz and Easter, the Defense Ministry of Azerbaijan reported. According to the report, the Armenian Armed Forces on the eve of the Nowruz holiday significantly increased the tension on the contact line of the Azerbaijani and Armenian troops by using heavy weapons, mortars and grenade launchers. The escalation of tensions in the conflict zone has been discussed for more than a year, and the mediation efforts of the OSCE Minsk Group have not provided results in terms of a peaceful settlement of the conflict. Baku believes that the current format of the talks on Karabakh is not effective, it may not lead to anything, and cannot solve the problem.
President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev, speaking on the occasion of the Nowruz holiday, said that some of the actions of the OSCE Minsk Group are provocative. This is a failure of one of the two recent resolutions on Karabakh at the Council of Europe. "The mediators in the conflict visited the Council of Europe and pressured the leadership of the organization, so that a second resolution was not adopted, as it supposedly created a problem in resolving the conflict. The same signals they sent not only to Strasbourg, but also the ministries of foreign affairs of many European countries, so that the resolution was not adopted. We accept this as a provocation," Ilham Aliyev said.
Answering a question from an Armenian journalist about whether these allegations relate to the Russian co-chair of the Minsk Group, the official representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry Maria Zakharova said: "We cannot accept this reproach at our own expense, as we have proved ourselves as a long-term and constructive participant in the negotiation process. The sincerity of our goals has been proved. We are on a par with the Azerbaijani and Armenian sides in wanting to resolve this very difficult situation, which for many years has been a major problem in bilateral relations. We really want this problem to finally go off the agenda, resolve it on the basis of international law, equality and respect for the parties."
