YEREVAN, FEBRUARY 25, ARMENPRESS. Artak Zakaryan – Chairman of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, calls on the international community to take tougher measures for restraining Azerbaijan since otherwise the region can be turned into a serious center of clashes.

Commenting on the Azerbaijani sabotage infiltration attempt in the Nagorno Karabakh line of contact overnight February 25, Artak Zakaryan told “Armenpress” that this is due to the fact that the international community fails to exert pressure on Azerbaijan to implement the Vienna and St. Petersburg agreements. “The international community must more strongly react to this and just speak with Azerbaijan with a compulsion language in order to implement the Vienna and St. Petersburg agreements, and the investigative mechanisms on ceasefire violations to be installed in the line of contact”, he said.

The MP stated that Azerbaijan’s such behavior is also due to balanced and unaddressed statements of the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs, their undefined calls to the sides. “All this allows Azerbaijan to continue its unconstructive policy, to completely reverse the events and present them in the way it wants”, Zakaryan said.

He said escalating the situation in the line of contact is also related with the domestic problems existing in Azerbaijan, and Azerbaijanis consider escalation of the situation in the border as an effective tool to divert the attention from those problems.

On February 25, around 03:00 and 04:00, the Azerbaijani side conducted an attack attempt at two south-eastern (Martuni) and eastern (Akna) directions of the Nagorno Karabakh-Azerbaijan line of contact by using respective mine clearance equipment and special measures.

The NKR Defense Army forces prevented the advance of the Azerbaijani forces on time at both directions due to video devices and pushed them back by causing losses. As a result of the countermeasures taken by the Defense Army, the Azerbaijani side suffered losses and has wounded. Several bodies are in the neutral zone. The Armenian side has no casualties and wounded.