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Andrey Sorokin rules out resumption of hostilities

During the annual award ceremony "Golden Keys and Rusty Locks", journalists asked Ambassador Andrey Sorokin, Head of the OSCE Office in Yerevan, to comment on the tensions on the Armenian-Azerbaijani border when Azerbaijan keeps Armenian settlements under fire for several hours. “They are using mortars and killing innocent civilians, which is absolutely unacceptable. But I do not think that the current situation can lead to the resumption of hostilities. But do not take this as an opinion of the Head of the OSCE Office in Yerevan, but as an opinion of a man who is closely observing the development of events,” he said. In reply to A1+’s observation that Azerbaijan ignores the mediators’ appeals to refrain from aggravating the situation, Mr Sorokin said, “If we look at the conflict from a human point of view, we can see that this is one of the few examples in international practice when Americans (Obama), Russians (Putin) and French (Hollande) are swimming in one direction in the same ship. The French represent Europe which means the entire international community is moving in one direction and they combine their efforts within the framework of the Minsk Group. We have big expectations for Germany, which will assume OSCE Chairmanship in 2016. I carefully followed Aliyev's visit to Germany and heard Merkel saying that Germany will be more actively involved in conflict management and resolution processes, including the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. In this context, we can expect definite steps.” It is well-known that OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs call on the conflicting parties to establish a mechanism for investigating incidents, create a commission to investigate border skirmishes and establish confidence-building measures. “Armenia has agreed to the proposal because people in Armenia believe this to be a natural way of solving the conflict while Azerbaijan is categorically against the proposal,” he said.