March 9, 2011 - 21:03 AMT
OPINION
Baku does not stop short even at “killing” a child to discredit Armenia

In its aspiration to discredit Armenia, Azerbaijan sometimes goes beyond all the limits.

Most likely, Azerbaijan has grasped that the daily reports that the Armenian side allegedly “again violated the ceasefire” on the background of permanent Azerbaijani firing of the Armenian positions can only evoke a smile. Thus, Baku decided to give a free range to fancy and disseminated “information on killing of an Azerbaijani child by the Armenian armed forces.”

Meanwhile, the NKR Defense Army made a correct comment - the reports of various Azerbaijani sources are controversial. Some of them state that the killed boy was eight; others speak about resident of Orta-Karvend settlement Farid Badalov, a ten-year-old boy, while some media reported that a teenager was killed.

Azerbaijani journalists could coordinate their work in releasing similar misinformation.

It is evident that Baku tries to distract the world community’s attention from the situation, in which Azerbaijan occurred by firing the Armenian positions several hours prior to the meeting of the Armenian, Russian and Azerbaijani Presidents in Sochi. And NKR serviceman Grigor Shakhkyan (born in 1991) was killed in the firing.

However, according to Spokesman of the Armenian Defense Minister David Karapetyan, “the authors of the Azerbaijani misinformation should conceive that similar third-rate steps will not convince the world community. They ought to be ashamed of manipulating child’s life.”

Leaving aside the matter of shame and conscience, Azerbaijan should listen to another appeal of the OSCE Minsk Group on non-violation of ceasefire, instead of conducting an anti-Armenian propaganda that is too thin, forgetting about all human and ethic norms.