Yesterday the co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group Yury Merzlyakov, Bernard Fassier, and Matthew Bryza issued a statement dedicated to the 15th anniversary of the ceasefire of Armenia and Azerbaijan. "Fifteen years ago large-scale hostilities ceased in Nagorno-Karabakh, in what had become the most violent conflict on the territory of the former Soviet Union. The leaders at the time made a courageous and farsighted decision to instruct their military commanders to sign an agreement on an immediate ceasefire with no fixed term. Unfortunately, this ceasefire has been imperfect and tragically every year lives are lost along the front lines. We sincerely hope that a peace settlement, towards which the parties are now working, will allow new generations to grow up in Armenia, Azerbaijan and Nagorno-Karabakh without experiencing the horrors of war. Until then, we call on the parties to implement the provisions of the ceasefire, the "Proposals on strengthening the ceasefire in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict" agreed in 1995, as well as the Co-Chairs’ proposals at the 2008 Helsinki Ministerial Conference to pull back snipers from the front lines. We express our hope that the present leaders will be able to overcome the complex causes and difficult consequences of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and create an atmosphere of security, trust, cooperation and fruitful communication between peoples in the region, allowing them to live in peace as good neighbors. We further hope the leaders will succeed, in cooperation with the Minsk Group Co-Chairs, in finalizing their Basic Principles for a peaceful settlement," runs the statement of the co-chairs. We’d like to mention that the May 12 ceasefire treaty of 1994 was the only agreement signed by the NKR. Yesterday the current chair of the OSCE, foreign affairs minister of Greece Dora Bakoyanis also made a statement, “I fully advocate the efforts of OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs as well as my representative ambassador Anjey Kasprshik to the resolution of the NKR conflict based on the Madrid principles,” stated Bakoyanis and emphasized that despite the ceasefire signed 15 years ago the environment is still tense in the region and human casualties occur from time to time.
