OSCE: "NOTHING TO" AZERI CLAIMS OF ARMENIAN ARSON

C O N F I D E N T I A L YEREVAN 000922 SIPDIS SIPDIS DEPT FOR EUR/CARC, EUR/SNEC E.O. 12958: DECL: 07/11/2016 TAGS: PREL PGOV AJ AM SUBJECT: OSCE: "NOTHING TO" AZERI CLAIMS OF ARMENIAN ARSON AROUND N-K REF: A) YEREVAN 851 B) BAKU 946 Classified By: Amb. John M. Evans for reasons 1.4 (b, d). -------------- SUMMARY -------------- ¶1. (C) There is "nothing to" the claim that Armenians had set fires to destroy Azeri property in the occupied territories surrounding Nagorno-Karabakh, according to Andrzej Kasprzyk, special representative of the OSCE chairman-in-office (CiO) on the Minsk Conference. The OSCE sent a monitoring group to the fire zone in June at the request of the N-K "Ministry of Foreign Affairs." Kasprzyk told the Ambassador privately that he would tell Azeri FM Mammadyarov of the group's finding, but would not speak publicly about it. Nevertheless, the Armenian press reported on the monitoring group's discoveries without attribution. End Summary. ¶2. (C) Kasprzyk told the Ambassador that there were fires in the disputed area every year, and that this year's early summer heat and winds exacerbated the problem. He said the fires had burned unoccupied grasslands, and had not harmed the pomegranate trees that stood in their paths. According to Kasprzyk, if the Azeris were attempting to levy an accusatory rebuttal to the reported destruction of an Armenian cemetery in Nakhichevan, they had failed. Kasprzyk said he would tell "the truth" to Mammadyarov when he saw him in Baku. (Note: He is in Baku now. Post reached a member of the OSCE CiO mission staff there July 10, but he was reluctant to discuss the issue over the phone from Azerbaijan. The staffer, Peter Keay, said that the mission had not issued any public statements about the monitoring results, and did not plan to do so.) ¶3. (C) The Armenian media picked up the story, reporting July 6 that the monitoring group "did not discover evidence to support the Azerbaijani side's allegations of deliberate arsons of villages on the territory controlled by the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic." The article further stated that N-K "Ministry of Defense" representatives who accompanied the monitoring group pointed out burnt fields three kilometers behind the Azeri front line. (Comment: The last statement appears to be an attempt on the part of NKR officials to emphasize "Deputy Foreign Minister" Masis Mailyan's contention that the fires actually were caused by Azeri tracer bullets (ref A). End Comment.) EVANS