Azerbaijan, Armenia declare truce
Print Edition
AZERBAIJAN and Armenian separatists in Nagorny Karabakh said yesterday that they had halted fighting after four days of bloodshed, as international powers scramble to resolve the worst violence in decades over the disputed region.
Armenian and Azeri forces said they had agreed a cease-fire deal after clashes since Friday left more than 60 people dead and sparked international pressure to halt the violence.
“Military actions were halted as of 12pm local time on Tuesday,” Azerbaijan’s defense ministry said. Meanwhile a Karabakh defense ministry spokesman told reporters “an order was given to stop shooting.”
The truce comes after Azerbaijan’s army said it had snatched control of several strategic locations inside Armenian-controlled territory, effectively changing the frontline for the first time since an inconclusive truce ended a war in 1994.
Both sides accused each other of starting the latest outbreak of violence and it has sparked concern of a wider conflict in the region that could drag in Russia and Turkey.
While Moscow has sold arms to both sides and treads a careful line between the two, it has a military alliance with, and base in, Armenia and far closer ties to Yerevan, its capital.
Turkey — which is locked in a feud with Moscow after Ankara downed a Russian warplane in Syria last November — has pledged its full support for Azerbaijan.
The so-called Minsk Group of the US, French, and Russian ambassadors to the Organization of the Security and Cooperation in Europe, which has long mediated Karabakh peace talks, was due to meet in Vienna yesterday.
The talks in Vienna were due to be brief and with no announcement to the media. Representatives from Armenia and Azerbaijan will be involved, a spokesman said.
Mediators will be sent to the region in the coming days to engage in shuttle diplomacy between the warring parties.
Russia and the US have called for the fighting to end but Turkey predicted that Azerbaijan will “one day” take back its territory and Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu vowed to stand by Baku “until the apocalypse.”
Azerbaijan’s defense ministry said yesterday that 16 of its soldiers had been killed over the previous two days, bringing the death toll to at least 64 on both sides.
Separatists backed by Yerevan seized control of mountainous Nagorny Karabakh, a majority ethnic Armenian region lying inside Azerbaijan, in an early 1990s war that claimed some 30,000 lives.
The sides have never signed a peace deal despite the 1994 cease-fire and sporadic violence on the line of contact regularly claims lives of soldiers on both sides, though the latest outbreak represents a serious escalation.
Energy-rich Azerbaijan, whose military spending exceeds Armenia’s entire state budget, has repeatedly threatened to take back the region by force.
Baku announced a unilateral truce on Sunday, but it failed to stop the fighting, and on Monday Armenia said a cease-fire would only be possible if both sides return to their previous positions.
The Kremlin has been undertaking “very energetic efforts” to stop the violence, spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, highlighting Moscow’s “growing concern.”
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