Nagorno-Karabakh

On the night of 13 March, Azerbaijani party violated ceasefire in the direction of South-Eastern part of the Line of Contact of Azerbaijan and Nagorno Karabakh. In the aftermath of the shots by snipers a military officer of Nagorno Karabakh Defense Army has been murdered.

Problem of refugees is one of the key subjects of negotiations over Karabakh, Bernard Fassier, French co-chair of OSCE Minks Group, said on Tuesday. American Co-chair Matthew Bryza, in his turn, stressed the importance of this issue. He said that the organizations dealing with refugees’ problems have taken part in negotiations in Stepanakert.

“The negotiations over the Nagorno Karabakh conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan can not completely satisfy the both sides, hence both of them will get 50% each by the solution of the conflict,” Goran Lenmarker, the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly’s Special Representative on Nagorno-Karabakh wrote in his report after visiting the regional countries. This statement has been negatively accepted by the Azeri society and mass media trying to understand what their part of 50% is.

Azerbaijan said on Tuesday its forces had killed three Armenian soldiers in fighting near breakaway Nagorno-Karabakh late on Monday. The Azeri Defence Ministry said Armenian soldiers had attacked an Azeri checkpoint in the Agdam district adjacent to the rebel territory.

The Armenian and Azerbaijani presidents have agreed to meet on the sidelines of the World Eco-nomic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on January 28 to discuss ways of resolving the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. The meeting was confirmed after the U.S., Russian, and French co-chairs of the Or-ganization for Security and Cooperation in Europe's Minsk Group met Armenian President Serzh Sarkisian in Yerevan on January 20, RFE/RL's Armenian Service reported.

Nearly five months after the August 2008 Russian-Georgian conflict that culminated in Moscow's recognition of the self-declared independence of Georgia's two separatists regions, the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict remains as the last "frozen conflict" in the South Caucasus. While international mediation of the Karabakh conflict continues to pressure the rival Armenian and Azerbaijani sides to maintain the peace process, the new post-August geopolitical landscape in the region suggests that a resolution to this conflict remains a long way away.

The co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group - the organization that is overseeing the Nagorno-Karabakh peace process - seem increasingly optimistic about the chances for a settlement in 2009. But experts in Baku remain cautious that the long-running dilemmas that have held up a settlement can finally be solved in the coming year.

The Republic of Nagorno Karabakh has joint the Declaration of Human Rights, announced the spokesman of NKR National Assembly Ashot Ghulyan during a two-day conference on human rights organized in NA of Nagorno Karabakh.

The European Union on Tuesday promised to provide support for resolving the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan. The EU welcomed the Moscow Declaration as a good basis for further progress toward resolving the decades-long issue within the framework of the negotiation process of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe's Minsk Group.

Russia, the United States and France called here on Thursday for an early comprehensive peaceful solution on Nagorno-Karabakh, a conflict-stricken region breakaway from Azerbaijan. The three countries, or the OSCE Minsk Group's Co-Chair countries in the jargon of the Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe, made the call on the sideline of the OSCE ministerial meeting in Helsinki.