Sheikh ul-Islam and Grand Mufti of the Caucasus Allahshukur Pashazade visiting Armenia for the first time has signed a joint memorandum together with Catholicos of All Armenians Garegin II and Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia calling to “refrain from ceasefire violations” and “remove snipers from the frontline, so that no more blood is shed on the line of contact and no deaths are reported”.

While the religious leaders participating in the meeting of the Presidium of the CIS Inter-Religious Council in Yerevan are calling for peace, the tension on the line of contact has not stopped in what many call a “war by ceasefire rules”.

On November 19 and 20 two 19-year-old conscripts were killed by Azeri sniper bullets at one of the south-eastern defensive positions of Nagorno Karabakh. This incident was followed by the Minister of Defense of Armenia saying: “a due response will follow immediately and punitive steps will be taken” leading to the death of seven Azeri soldiers between November 20-25, as reported by the Armenian side.

The Armenian defense ministry press release says more than 1,500 shots were fired from the Azeri side last week in the direction of the Karabakhi military posts and that the enemy made some 250 target shots from sniper rifles in addition to submachine gunfire.

President Serzh Sargsyan made a statement in this respect that: “For as long as the issue remains unresolved, there will always be unrest on the border. But we would like that unrest not to cause human casualties”.

(This year 12 people died in ceasefire violations)

“Under the circumstances of this kind of ceasefire violations, it is recommended to suspend the negotiations, because we are dealing with crime,” Ruben Mehrabyan, expert at the Armenian Center for National and International Studies, told ArmeniaNow. “The international community has to set a condition – negotiations can be continued only if snipers are removed from the line of contact.”

A number of other political analysts are making a similar appeal, however it is not clear what the Armenian side is planning to do and whether the issue will be discussed with the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs, who are in Armenia since Monday.

As part of the regional visit OSCE MG co-chairs Igor Popov (Russia), Bernard Fassier (France) and Robert Bradtke (the USA) as well as OSCE chairman’s personal representative Andjey Casprshik have arrived in Yerevan along with future co-chair Jacques Faure to replace Fassier in 2012. The delegation has held meetings with Serzh Sargsyan and Minister of Foreign Affairs Edward Nalbandyan.

Masis Mayilyan, chairing the Foreign Affairs and Security Public Council of NKR, says “when crossfire is an everyday reality along the whole perimeter of the border, it rather like war than ceasefire.”

“And in such cases the issue has to be raised on a different, much more serious, level – if for every killed soldier Azerbaijan had been condemned by the international community and made accountable [for its actions], it [Azerbaijan] would have thought twice before committing such provocative deeds again,” he told ArmeniaNow.

Experts also stress that the repeated violations of the ceasefire regime hamper greatly the effectiveness of the negotiation process that first started in 1994 and that “real ceasefire has to be established”.