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Azerbaijan: Unilateral cease-fire against Nagorno-Karabakh Azerbaijan declares cease-fire, but fighting continues in breakaway enclave
(about 1 hour later)
BAKU, Azerbaijan — Azerbaijan’s Defense Ministry announced a unilateral cease-fire Sunday against the separatist region of Nagorno-Karabakh, but rebel forces in the area said that they continued to come under fire from Azerbaijani forces. MOSCOW — Even as Azerbaijan announced a unilateral cease-fire Sunday, reports of sporadic fighting between Azerbaijani and ethnic Armenian forces over the separatist enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh continued. Regional and world leaders called for an end to the worst violence in the region since a cease-fire halted a war over the territory in 1994.
Fighting in what was a dormant conflict for two decades flared up over the weekend with a boy and at least 30 troops killed on both sides. Each side blamed the other for Saturday’s escalation, the worst since the end of a full-scale war in 1994. Armenia and Azerbaijan, both former Soviet republics, fought a bloody ethnic war over the territory as the Soviet Union fell apart. About 20,000 people died. Formally a part of Azerbaijan, Nagorno-Karabakh is de facto controlled by a separatist government backed by Armenia and has increasingly been the site of sporadic border conflicts in recent years. Today, nearly all of its population is ethnically Armenian.
The Defense Ministry said, in response to pleas from international organizations, it will be unilaterally “suspending a counter-offensive and response on the territories occupied by Armenia.” The ministry added it will not focus on fortifying the territory that Azerbaijan has “liberated.” It did not elaborate. This weekend’s violence has been on a previously unseen scale, analysts said, with reports of the use of helicopters, drones, tanks and artillery along the “line of conflict” that separates the two sides. Thirty soldiers and a boy were killed in fighting Saturday, as Azerbaijan claimed to have seized several strategic heights and several villages from the Nagorno-Karabakh government. Both sides blamed the other for the violence.
Nagorno-Karabakh, a region in Azerbaijan, has been under the control of local ethnic Armenian forces and the Armenian military since a war ended in 1994 with no resolution of the region’s status. The conflict is fueled by long-simmering tensions between Christian Armenians and mostly Muslim Azeris. The United States and Russia have called for an immediate end to the fighting. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Sunday said that he will stand with Azerbaijan “to the end” and that “we pray our Azerbaijani brothers will prevail in these clashes,” his office reported.
Armenian forces also occupy several areas outside Nagorno-Karabakh proper. The sides are separated by a demilitarized buffer zone, but small clashes have broken out frequently. On Sunday, paramilitary forces from Nagorno-Karabakh said they launched a counteroffensive, which Azerbaijan claimed it had repelled, destroying 10 tanks in the process. It was not possible to confirm reports of casualties on Sunday from either side.
Earlier Sunday, a spokesman for Azerbaijan’s Defense Ministry, Vagif Dargyakhly, said Azerbaijani positions came under fire overnight and that civilian areas also were hit. The Azerbaijani government said in a statement that it would implement a unilateral cease-fire Sunday afternoon, but it also said it would reinforce the territories it “liberated.” But representatives for the de facto government in Karabakh claimed fighting was continuing along the front lines, Radio Free Europe’s Armenian service reported. The news agency has also published video of ethnic Armenian reserve fighters mobilizing.
On Saturday, Armenia said 18 soldiers were killed and Azerbaijan reported 12 dead. The violence came at the conclusion of a nuclear summit in Washington, which both Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev attended. The two did not meet. U.S. Secretary of State John F. Kerry condemned the cease-fire violations, urging the sides “to show restraint, avoid further escalation and strictly adhere to the cease-fire.”
Footage from the village of Gapanli, over 250 kilometers east of Baku, on the Azerbaijani side, showed Grad multiple missile launchers firing rounds from the field. Thomas de Waal, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and an expert on the conflict, wrote that this weekend’s violence was “much more serious” than the customary violence that resumes each spring, as soldiers take potshots at one another across the border.
Officials in the self-proclaimed republic of Nagorno-Karabakh promptly disputed the reports of the unilateral cease-fire, saying that the town of Martakert has been heavily shelled all day despite Azerbaijan’s pledge. David Babayan, spokesman for the Karabakh president, told The Associated Press on Sunday that they had not seen any signs that fighting was suspended: “The situation is quite the opposite.” “It is more likely that one of the two parties to the conflict — and more likely the Azerbaijani side, which has a stronger interest in the resumption of hostilities — is trying to alter the situation in its favor with a limited military campaign,” he wrote.
The defense ministry of Nagorno-Karabakh on Sunday also claimed to have restored control over a strategic area near the front line. It said Nagorno-Karabakh forces went on a counter-offensive around the village of Talish after Azerbaijani forces shelled their positions just before dawn. Two Karabakh troops were reported injured. Azerbaijan is openly exasperated with a decades-long process of negotiations under the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe and led by diplomats from the United States, Russia and France, to broker a resolution to the territorial dispute.
It also said Azerbaijan was using rockets, artillery and armor against the region. “There have been 22 years of attempts to find a peaceful solution to this conflict,” said Polad Bulbuloglu, the Azerbaijani ambassador to Moscow, during an interview on the radio station Govorit Moskva on Saturday. “How long can it go on? We are ready for a peaceful solution to the question. But if this won’t be solved by peaceful means, then it will be solved by military means.”
The self-proclaimed officials in Karabakh, however, said they will be ready to discuss a cease-fire with Azerbaijan as long as their respective positions on the ground are restored. Richard Giragosian, director of the Regional Studies Center, an independent think tank in Armenia, said in an interview that the West had little leverage over Azerbaijan in the conflict but that it did offer “an opening for Russian unilateral diplomacy,” possibly allowing Russian President Vladimir Putin the chance to assert his role as a peacemaker in the region.
Armenia’s deputy defense minister at a Sunday briefing with military attaches based in Yerevan said Armenia will be ready to send troops to Karabakh “if necessary.” On Saturday, Putin called for both sides “to immediately stop firing and exercise restraint,” his spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, told journalists.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan vowed Sunday to back its ally Azerbaijan in the conflict, saying that the flare-up could have been avoided if “fair and decisive steps” had been taken.
“We pray our Azerbaijani brothers will prevail in these clashes with the least casualties,” he said.
The unresolved conflict has been an economic blow to Armenia because Turkey has closed its border with Armenia.
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Avet Demourian in Yerevan, Armenia, and Dominique Soguel in Istanbul contributed to this report.
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