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March 4, 2008 Officials in Armenia
and Azerbaijan have confirmed an
outbreak of military clashes in two
regions of the disputed territory of
Nagorno-Karabakh.
Officials on both side confirmed
multiple casualties, including two
Azerbaijani soldiers killed.
At least one side said clashes were
continuing.
The fighting appeared to be the most
serious violation in years of the
cease-fire agreement between Baku and
Yerevan over the territory, which is
dominated by ethnic Armenians and
located within Azerbaijan.
The mood in Armenia was already tense,
with a 20-day state of emergency
declared in response to opposition-led
protests over a presidential election
in mid-February.
Skirmishes broke out in two separate
districts of northwest Karabakh, with
gunfire and shelling reported in three
villages in the Terter and Goranboy
regions.
Armenian and Azerbaijani officials
have each blamed the opposing side for
initiating the clashes amid
conflicting reports about how they
began.
Armenian Foreign Minister Vartan
Oskanian told RFE/RL's Armenian
Service that Azerbaijani forces were
responsible for initiating a "serious
challenge to Armenian forces" and
suggested more substantial military
hardware was involved than had been in
any previous violations of the 1994
cease-fire agreement that brought an
end to major hostilities over
Nagorno-Karabakh.
Oskanian accused Baku of striking at a
moment when Yerevan is particularly
vulnerable, with the state of
emergency in place since government
troops and police forcibly dispersed
opposition protesters in clashes on
March 1 that left at least eight
people dead.
"We condemn this challenge, and we
think that this is an attempt by the
Azerbaijani side to exploit the
current situation in Armenia,"
Oskanian said. "Perhaps they thought
we had focused all of our attention on
our internal situation, and that this
could provide them with a
psychological advantage, but this
hasn't proved the case."
Baku, meanwhile, rejects the
accusation from Yerevan, saying it was
Armenian forces who began the
fighting. Foreign Ministry spokesman
Khazar Ibrahim told RFE/RL's
Azerbaijani Service that he believed
authorities in Yerevan devised the
conflict in order to divert attention
from the weekend chaos.
"This is a clear provocation by
Armenia," Ibrahim said. "They are
trying to use the situation which is
taking place in Yerevan after the
elections and are trying to divert the
attention of their citizens and
population from the internal and
domestic issues in order to seek an
external enemy."
Tension has been chronic between
Yerevan and Baku over the status of
Nagorno-Karabakh. Internationally
monitored negotiations to resolve the
conflict have scored minor
achievements, but a final resolution
appears distant.
Armenian and Azerbaijani forces
clashed over the territory in a
1991-94 war that displaced some
600,000 Azeris and left as many as
25,000 people dead. Both sides
continue to claim the territory as
their own.
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev has
used his country's mounting oil wealth
to stoke tensions further. He has
funneled more than billion into
bolstering the country's defenses. On
a trip to western Azerbaijan on March
3, Aliyev told reporters that
diplomatic efforts "are not enough,"
adding that, "to resolve the Karabakh
conflict, we have to be strong, we
have to be ready to liberate our lands
by military means, and we are ready."
The U.S. State Department reports that
between 30-40 people die each year in
Karabakh as a result of violations of
the cease-fire. If confirmed, however,
these latest clashes would be the
worst fighting seen in the disputed
territory in years, and come at a
particularly delicate time in
Armenian-Azerbaijani relations.
Matthew Bryza, the U.S. co-chair of
the Organization for Security and
Cooperation in Europe's (OSCE) Minsk
Group, which oversees negotiations on
Nagorno-Karabakh, is currently in
Baku, as is Ambassador Andrzej
Kasprzyk, the personal representative
of the OSCE chairman in office. Both
are holding talks with officials on
restoring the terms of the cease-fire. |
