It is already the fifteenth year that the coming of spring along the Line of Contact of Armenian and Azerbaijani forces is marked by increased deadly sniper activity.

This is connected with the start of spring agricultural work in areas near the border, which largely predetermines the crop capacity of the year for the local farmers and, therefore, the degree of population in the near-frontline area.

The spring activation of sniper fire is a strategic plan aimed at disrupting the normal regime of agricultural work.

It is felt particularly acutely in the province of Tavush in northeastern Armenia where the major heights are controlled by the Azerbaijani army and are very convenient positions for snipers.

In recent years several civilians of the villages of Koti and Barekamavan, including a 15-year-old shepherd, were shot dead while working in the field.

This year the first day of spring was marred in the village of Chinari of the Tavush province where 29-year-old junior sergeant of the armed forces of Armenia Sargis Voskanyan was hit by an Azeri sniper. He was fatally wounded in the head.

The village of Chinari is situated in the Berd area of the Tavush province of Armenia, inside a deep hollow surrounded by high mountains where Azerbaijani units are deployed. A year and a half ago the name of the village was often mentioned in connection with sniper activity. Two civilians of the village were killed by snipers in June 2008.

During the meeting of the heads of Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) member states’ defense ministers later that year, Armenian minister Seyran Ohanyan raised the issue and even had a wrangle with his Azeri counterpart over it.

Shortly after the report about the killed Armenian serviceman in Chinari, Armenian Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandyan stressed that Armenia and Karabakh remain willing to strengthen the ceasefire regime and withdraw snipers -- something that Azerbaijan has not done yet.

Issues pertaining to the ceasefire regime and withdrawal of snipers were brought up still during the Helsinki conference in December 2008 of the foreign ministers of OSCE member states and reiterated on several occasions later, including on the 15th anniversary of the Armenian-Azeri ceasefire in May last year.

Speaking in Yerevan on March 2, Minister Nalbandyan stated that “it is the war rhetoric of Azerbaijan that hampers the Karabakh settlement.”

He said that “the factor of application of force by Azerbaijan had become the cause of the origination of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and the same factor impedes its resolution.”

During his joint press conference with the visiting Spanish Minister of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation Miguel Angel Moratinos, Nalbandyan also mentioned the massacres of ethnic Armenians in the Azeri town of Sumgait in February 1988 as the first in a series of ethnic cleansings against Armenians in Azerbaijan.

The Armenian foreign minister expressed bewilderment over Azerbaijan’s continued war rhetoric and views that military force could be an option in resolving the Karabakh conflict.

“I am sure such things are not taught at MGIMO,” commented Nalbandyan tartly in an apparent jibe at Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, a graduate of MGIMO, or the Moscow State Institute of International Relations.