Azerbaijan says it will halt fight with separatists in conflict region
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AZERBAIJAN said yesterday it would stop fighting Armenian-backed separatists over the breakaway Nagorno-Karabakh region after two days of clashes, but the other side denounced Baku’s gesture as hollow and said violence was continuing.
Nagorno-Karabakh, which lies inside Azerbaijan but is controlled by ethnic Armenians, has run its own affairs with heavy military and financial backing from Armenia since a separatist war ended in 1994.
But the situation along the tense “contact line” deteriorated in recent weeks, leading to clashes in which dozens were killed that drew international calls for an immediate cease-fire. Both sides also reported civilian casualties.
“Armenia has violated all the norms of international law. We won’t abandon our principal position. But at the same time we will observe the cease-fire and after that we will try to solve the conflict peacefully,” President Ilham Aliyev said at a security council meeting broadcast by Azeri state TV.
He also said that Azeri troops had achieved a “great victory” in an apparent reference to territorial gains made on Saturday.
Armenian officials, however, said the fighting had not let up and Deputy Defense Minister David Tonoyan said his country was ready to provide “direct military assistance” to Nagorno-Karabakh forces if necessary.
“The statement by the Azerbaijan side is an information trap and does not amount to a unilateral cease-fire,” Artsrun Hovhannisyan, spokesman for the Armenian Defence Ministry, said in a post on his Facebook page.
Russian news agencies reported artillery attacks by both sides near the town of Mardakert in the north of Nagorno-Karabakh.
The Azeri Defense Ministry said earlier yesterday it would “cease retaliatory military actions” against the separatist forces. The previous day it said the Azeri army had “liberated strategic heights and settlements” in the north and east of the region.
The Nagorno-Karabakh military said Baku’s statement on a unilateral cease-fire was “disinformation” but that it was ready to discuss a proposal from Azerbaijan on the condition both sides returned to their positions held before the clashes erupted.
“The Nagorno-Karabakh armed forces are ready to meet and discuss a cease-fire proposal,” it said.
The conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh, home to about 150,000 people on the southern Armenian-Azeri border, broke out in the dying years of Soviet Union. By the time the 1994 cease-fire was brokered, about 30,000 people had been killed in the violence.
Multiple efforts over the years to reach a permanent settlement led by France, Russia and the United states have failed. Baku frequently threatens to take back the mountain region by force.
The Azeri Defense Ministry said its forces destroyed 10 separatist tanks and killed multiple fighters in overnight clashes.
The Nagorno-Karabakh military said claims it had suffered heavy losses were a “display of unrestrained fantasies,” saying it had destroyed 14 Azeri tanks and five armored vehicles in the past 24 hours.
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