International Reaction
Finland - Finnish foreign minister and OSCE Chairman-in-Office, Ilkka Kanerva, urged everyone concerned to “exercise maximum restraint, and observe the terms of the ceasefire".
United States - State Department spokesman Tom Casey told reporters that the US was concerned about the incident, which only served to underline the need for a negotiated settlement.
Russia - A statement released by the Russian Foreign Ministry said that Russia is seriously concerned about the military clashes in the northwest Nagorno-Karabakh region in Azerbaijan. It said the clashes would by no means be allowed to escalate into large-scale combat and spill over into neighboring regions.
OSCE Minsk Group - French, Russian and U.S. co-chairs said the conflicting parties should “restore confidence along the Line of Contact and desist from any further confrontations, escalation of violence or warmongering rhetoric.” They also called on Baku and Yerevan to “redouble their efforts to endorse the Basic Principles for the peaceful resolution of the conflict presented to the sides on the margins of the Madrid OSCE Ministerial in November 2007, and to begin as soon as possible the process of drafting a peace agreement on this basis.”
Read more about this topic: 2008 Mardakert Skirmishes
Famous quotes containing the word reaction:
“In contrast to revenge, which is the natural, automatic reaction to transgression and which, because of the irreversibility of the action process can be expected and even calculated, the act of forgiving can never be predicted; it is the only reaction that acts in an unexpected way and thus retains, though being a reaction, something of the original character of action.”
—Hannah Arendt (1906–1975)