The Azerbaijani side denied direct contact yet again, Colonel Andranik Mkrtumyan—representative of the General Staff of the Armenian Armed Forces—stated after Wednesday’s regular OSCE monitoring.  

“For already several years we are proposing to organize direct contacts by crossing the [Armenian-Azerbaijani] border during the monitoring. [But] The Azerbaijani side stubbornly refuses,” Mkrtumyan noted.  

He recalled that the Armenian side is prepared and authorized for such meeting. “But the Azerbaijani side’s demeanor bespeaks a formal attitude with respect to the conducting of monitoring,” he stressed. 

In Colonel Andranik Mkrtumyan’s words, the international organization representatives’ being at the border for several minutes does not yield much result. “That is why we had proposed the OSCE representatives to organize a meeting with the local commanders in the first phase, and, subsequently, with the village prefects. Furthermore, we are proposing a long-term monitoring for several days, and one-sided monitoring,” representative of the General Staff of the Armenian Armed Forces said.