Karabagh Conflict news
Communique From NKR Representative in USA
Washington, DC – Last week an Azerbaijani military unit attacked defense positions of Nagorno Karabakh, wounding two Karabakh officers and seizing two military posts near Levonarkh located in the northern part of the Line of Contact. After fruitless attempts to reinstate the status-quo through OSCE mediation, the NKR Defense Army launched a counter-offensive and restored its defense positions causing casualties to the adversary.
This blatant violation of the 1994 Ceasefire Agreement by Azerbaijan follows President Ilham Aliyev’s recent statement that his country had been buying military hardware, airplanes and ammunition and was prepared to attack Nagorno Karabakh again.
NKR Government informed the OSCE representative in the region about the Azeri attack and asked the Personal Representative of the OSCE Chairman-in-office to urge Baku to stop the offensive and retire to previous positions. However, Azerbaijan’s refusal to cooperate left no option for the NKR defense forces other than to respond in kind, reclaiming the two military posts after a brief but intensive firefight.
NKR Ministry of Foreign Affairs called for a crisis-monitoring of the area to fully investigate the incident. However, the mission, which was planned for March 7, had to be postponed due to Baku's refusal to ensure the security of the OSCE personnel.
NKR military intelligence points to increased concentration of Azerbaijani military hardware and personnel close to Levonarkh.
“We urge, once again, the Azeri leadership to refrain from attempts to violate the armistice and also warn that any intrusion by the Azeri military units will receive an adequate response of the NKR Defense Army,” said today’s statement of the NKR Foreign Ministry.
The OSCE Minsk Group Co-chairs issued a statement (http://www.osce.org/item/30094.html), in which they called on the conflicting sides to restore confidence along the Line of Contact and desist from any further confrontations, escalation of violence or warmongering rhetoric.
“The Co-Chairs reiterate that there is no military solution to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. The outbreak of hostilities would destabilize the entire region, with calamitous consequences for all involved”, the statement said in part.
In the last several years Azerbaijan has used its vast oil revenues to build up its offensive capabilities aimed against Nagorno Karabakh, threatening the latter with another war. Azerbaijan’s destructive behavior jeopardizes OSCE mediation efforts and also goes against the U.S. goal of fostering peace and stability in the South Caucasus.
The Nagorno Karabakh Republic remains fully committed to the peaceful resolution of the conflict with Azerbaijan and also ready to resume full-fledged negotiations without any preconditions. NKR welcomes continued mediation efforts of the OSCE Minsk Group, co-chaired by the United States, Russia and France.
We also call on the United States and the international community to hold Azerbaijan accountable for the recent violation of the truce and to help prevent further escalation of tensions in the region.
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The Office of the Nagorno Karabakh Republic in the United States is based in Washington, DC and works with the U.S. government, academia and the public representing the official policies and interests of the Nagorno Karabakh Republic, Artsakh.
AP
11 March 08
BAKU, Azerbaijan (AP) - Azerbaijani and ethnic Armenian forces
exchanged more gunfire near the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh
over the weekend, killing two civilians and at least two soldiers,
officials in Baku said Monday.
There has been an alarming spike in shootings that Azerbaijani
officials say has killed seven soldiers and civilians this month
alone. The violence has raised new fears that full-scale fighting
could break out again between both sides.
Armenian officials confirmed the weekend shooting, but denied there
were fatalities on either side.
Azerbaijani Defense Ministry spokesman Eldar Sabiroglu said two
Azerbaijani civilians were killed and two wounded in the shooting
overnight Saturday in the Agdam region.
On Sunday, meanwhile, more small-arms fire broke out in another
adjacent region, killing one Azerbaijani soldier and injuring
another. An Armenian soldier was killed also, Sabiroglu said.
A Nagorno-Karabakh military spokesman, Lt. Col. Senor Hasratian,
denied there were fatalities, either civilian or military during
the weekend skirmishes. "As long as you don't consider the regular
violations of the cease-fire from the Azerbaijani side, then one could
say that the situation along the line of control are fully normal,"
he told The Associated Press.
In Yerevan, meanwhile, the skirmishes prompted comment from President
Robert Kocharian, who told reporters that two ethnic Armenian
officers were wounded when Azerbaijani forces attacked an outpost on
Nagorno-Karabakh's outskirts.
"It's been a long time since artillery was used on the front line,"
he said.
He said mediators from the Organization for Security and Cooperation
in Europe later worked to persuade both sides to halt their gunfire.
Ali Hasanov, a top official with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliev's
administration, accused Armenia of sparking the violence, and he linked
it to the continuing unrest in Armenia that broke out following the
Feb. 19 presidential election.
Police violently cracked down on days of protests by supporters
of opposition candidate Levon Ter-Petrosian, who claimed the vote
was flawed.
Officials say the man Kocharian endorsed - Prime Minister Serge
Sarkisian - won.
"The Armenian leadership has resorted to such provocations to distract
attention of Armenians and the international community from the
internal situation in the country," Hasanov alleged. He said five
Azerbaijani soldiers and two civilians have been killed this month
alone in and around Nagorno-Karabakh, and several civilians and
soldiers injured.
Some ask whether front-line skirmish was connected with political turmoil in Armenia. By Karine Ohanian in Stepanakert, Samira Ahmedbeyli in Baku and Seda Muradyan in Yerevan
By Karine Ohanian in Stepanakert, Samira Ahmedbeyli in Baku and Seda Muradyan in Yerevan
As the dust begins to settle from a firefight between Azerbaijan and Armenian forces earlier this week, their respective politicians have reverted to verbal warfare as international mediators work to contain the damage to longer term prospects for peace.
Accounts differ as to who fired first. But all agree it was the most serious breach of the ceasefire in a decade, and one that could have alarming consequences if it were repeated.
Azerbaijani defence ministry spokesman Eldar Sabirogli said Armenian units broke the ceasefire by firing on Azerbaijani positions near the villages of Cheliburt, Talish and Gapanli in the Terter district, and the Tapgaragoyunli settlement in neighbouring Geranboy district. Both districts are to the north and east of Nagorny Karabakh.
Armenian sources confirmed that the fighting was in this general area, adjacent to the Mardakert district of Nagorny Karabakh.
Sabirogli said four Azerbaijani soldiers were killed and two civilians injured.
Senor Hasratian, spokesman for the defence ministry of the unrecognised Karabakh government, also cited a figure of four Azerbaijani dead and said two Armenian soldiers were injured, although in neither case were the wounds life-threatening.
He dismissed the accusations coming out of Baku, saying, "They are deliberately distorting things. If we had launched an attack, the bodies of the four Azerbaijani soldiers who died would not be lying on territory held by the army of Nagorny Karabakh."
The two sides agreed on these casualty figures, although according to Reuters, the Azerbaijanis also claimed that the Armenians lost 12 soldiers, which Hasratian denied.
The defence ministry of Armenia itself, which treats Nagorny Karabakh as a separate and independent entity, came out with a statement blaming the Azerbaijanis for starting the firefight.
Ministry spokesman Colonel Seyran Shahsuvarian said Azerbaijani forces seized an important defensive position held by the other side, which then responded with gunfire, regained the territory, and forced their opponents back to their original lines.
Major Hachik Tavadyan, one of those injured on the Nagorny Karabakh side, confirmed this account of events from his hospital bed, adding, "I was there and I know how it started. I cannot tell a lie - they attacked us first."
Anar Mamedkhanov, a member of Azerbaijan's parliament, told IWPR that President Ilham Aliev was visiting that part of the country, so it would hardly have made sense to launch military operations near to where he was.
"Basic human logic would tell you that for reasons of security, it wouldn't have been in the interests of the Azerbaijani armed forces to mount a provocation that day, since the president was in a neighbouring region that day. Why create a risk to his life?" asked Mamedkhanov.
The incident was undoubtedly the most serious of its kind in many years. Since a truce was signed in 1994, leaving Armenian forces in control of Nagorny Karabakh, there have been sporadic shooting incidents but the ceasefire has by and large held. The OSCE, the international mediating group, operates a limited monitoring mission which visits the front line periodically.
The OSCE's "Minsk Group" of international diplomats has tried repeatedly to broker an end to what is effectively a frozen conflict, but has found it impossible to devise a formula acceptable to all.
The Nagorny Karabakh authorities, along with Yerevan, say their de facto independence should be recognised by the international community. Azerbaijan insists that it has been deprived of control over large swathes of territory within its international boundaries, and that sovereignty must be restored as a precondition for discussions on autonomy for the Armenians there.
Predictably, this week's skirmish gave rise to belligerent talk from officials on both sides.
"The Azerbaijani army is responding to the Armenians as they deserve, and we are fully capable of defending our country's independence," Lieutenant-General Najmeddin Sadigov, chief of the Azerbaijani general staff, told ANS television.
Nagorny Karabakh's foreign ministry said, "The Azerbaijani side has sought to use such incidents of this kind to destabilise the situation in the entire region as well as on the [front] line of contact," and warned that Armenian forces would respond to such actions robustly.
The ministry demanded that the OSCE mission conduct "a thorough investigation into the causes and circumstances of the incident".
OSCE monitors were due to visit the line of fire on March 7, but the trip was postponed.
The international community was quick to call on all sides to avoid a repetition of the violence.
Finnish foreign minister Ilkka Kanerva, the OSCE Chairman-in-Office, who had visited the region only the week before, urged everyone concerned to "exercise maximum restraint, and observe the terms of the ceasefire".
"At this critical juncture in the negotiations to find a peaceful solution to the Nagorny Karabakh conflict, any action leading to a destabilisation of the line of contact can only have a negative impact on the overall situation," he said. "I urge the parties to avoid actions that could lead to further unnecessary loss of life."
He noted that the OSCE chairman's representative for the Karabakh conflict, Andrzej Kasprzyk, was currently in the region and was "in close contact with the parties".
A senior OSCE official told IWPR that "the situation is very dangerous; there is a risk of escalation", calling this "the worst incident in the last ten years".
"Fortunately, on this occasion, there was a political decision not to escalate," he said. "The worry is that this kind of skirmish could become a common occurrence."
The United States, one of the co-chairs of the Minsk Group, also had a senior diplomat - Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Matt Bryza - talking to top politicians in the region
In Washington, 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.
He noted, "There has not been a repeat of the incident and we hope that continues.
Azad Isazade, a defence expert at the Institute for War and Democracy in Baku, said ceasefire violations were fairly common at this time of year, when the snow melted and it became easier to move around. "Of course, on this occasion the shooting was on a larger scale," he said. "But I don't think it will lead to full-scale war."
Other commentators in Azerbaijan, Nagorny Karabakh and Armenia tended to identify internal political factors which might have prompted the opposing side to deliberately seek a confrontation.
David Babayan, a political analyst in Nagorny Karabakh, speculated that the Azerbaijani leadership might have been probing their opponents' defences at a time when Armenia itself is in political turmoil.
A second possibility, he suggested, was that Baku was seriously concerned that Nagorny Karabakh's aspirations for independence had moved a step forward following the declaration of independence by Kosovo, another former autonomous territory within a Communist state.
"Azerbaijan is seriously worried about the right of nations to self-determination, and it chose to react by using force," he said.
A common theme among analysts across the region was that the exchange of gunfire was in some way connected with the domestic political strife in Armenia, where opposition protests over the results of the February 19 presidential election ended in bloodshed on March 1. Eight people were reported dead after running battles between police and demonstrators in the capital Yerevan.
Azerbaijani political scientist Rasim Musabekov believes the administration of outgoing president Robert Kocharian and his elected successor Serzh Sarkisian stood to gain from creating a diversion to distract attention from their own problems.
Armed forces chief of staff Lt-Gen Sadigov made a similar point, saying the ceasefire was a direct consequence of Armenia's internal troubles.
Armenia's foreign minister Vardan Oskanian, meanwhile, accused Baku of "taking advantage of the exacerbation of the internal political situation in Armenia".
Despite the exchange of recriminations between Azerbaijan and Armenian politicians, and the flurry of international efforts to smooth over the crisis, not everyone was so exercised about it.
In Baku, Zamin Haji of the opposition Yeni Musavat fulminated about what he said was the "disgusting" disregard that Azerbaijani television stations showed for the clash by showing light entertainment rather than breaking news on the fighting.
In Stepanakert, the capital of Nagorny Karabakh, economist Ruzanna Petrosyan was dismissive of the media coverage of the fighting.
"I read on the internet that military activities had resumed. That's all down to you journalists - you make a world war out of a common-or-garden clash, anything to be sensational," she complained to IWPR. "It's all untrue. As you can see, life goes on as normal."
Karine Ohanian works for the Demo Newspaper in Stepanakert. Samira Ahmedbeyli is an IWPR contributor in Baku. Seda Muradyan is IWPR's editor in Yerevan.
While every effort has been made to use neutral language in this language, the terminology here was chosen by IWPR editors in London and may not reflect that preferred by the authors.
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