Thursday, November 20 2014

The Co-Chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group (Ambassadors Igor Popov of the Russian Federation, James Warlick of the United States of America, and Pierre Andrieu of France) remain deeply concerned that there has been no humanitarian access to the crash site of the military helicopter downed by Azerbaijani forces on November 12.  

The OSCE's website quotes the co-chairs as saying that the wreckage of the helicopter lies in a heavily mined area of neutral territory on the Line of Contact and that they call on the sides to cease firing in the vicinity of the crash site and facilitate the demining of the area surrounding the site.  

In the spirit of the Astrakhan statement of October 2010 between the Presidents of Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Russia, the Co-Chairs urge Azerbaijan to permit the recovery of the bodies of the victims, and Armenia to cooperate fully with all efforts to resolve this humanitarian situation.  

"We note the presence of the Personal Representative of the OSCE Chairman-in-Office Ambassador Andrzej Kasprzyk and his team in the region, and encourage the sides to use his good offices to allow access. We reaffirm our November 12 statement, reminding the sides of their responsibilities to respect the ceasefire and honor the commitments they made in Sochi, Newport, and Paris to find a peaceful resolution to the conflict," the co-chairs say.  

To remind, the Azeri armed forces downed an Armenian Mi-24 while it was conducting a training flight near the Line on Contact on 12 November.  Three officers of the NKR Armed Forces, Sergey Sahakyan, Sargis Nazaryan and Azat Sahakyan, were on board. The NKR State Committee for POWs, Captives and the Missing has requested the ICRC assistance in returning the crewmembers of the downed helicopter. The Azeri officer that shot the helicopter down has been awarded a medal.

The Armenians are still able to find out what has happened to the crew of the shot-down helicopter because the Azeris keep firing at the site.  Nor have they given any security guarantees to OSCE observers wishing to monitor the area.