Fighting Goes on as Azerbaijan, Armenia Reject Cease-Fire
Leaders of Azerbaijan and Armenia set seemingly impossible terms for agreeing to a cease-fire.
(Bloomberg) -- Fighting continued in and around the contested Nagorno-Karabakh enclave Saturday as the leaders of Azerbaijan and Armenia set seemingly impossible terms for agreeing to calls from the leaders of the U.S., France and Russia for a truce.
“Cease-fire ok, but on what conditions? Conditions must be that they withdraw from the territories,” Aliyev said in a website statement, referring to Armenian forces. “We heard it many times, we don’t have time to wait another 30 years. The conflict must be resolved now.”
Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said in a national address, “Victory and only victory is the way we see to end this war.” Earlier in the day, he said Armenia is ready to accept a truce but only if Turkish forces leave the area, AFP reported. Ankara backs Azerbaijan but denies it has any military presence there.
Officials reported shelling and rocket fire in and around Stepanakert, the capital of Nagorno-Karabakh. Armenia has controlled the enclave and surrounding regions -- all internationally recognized to be within Azerbaijan’s borders -- since a war in the early 1990s. Azerbaijan accused Armenian forces of shelling villages nearby Saturday. The latest battles began a week ago and have provoked calls from the presidents of Russia, France and the U.S. for a cease-fire.
French President Emmanuel Macron spoke to the leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan Friday and proposed restarting talks in the so-called Minsk Group, which has led peace efforts since the 1990s, his office said in a statement.
But Turkey rejected those appeals, saying the three powers were biased in favor of Armenia.
In his speech, Pashinyan said Turkish forces were leading the Azerbaijani operation. “The scale of it is unprecedented,” he said of the attack. The authorities in Baku and Ankara have denied the Turkish military is involved.
The unrecognized government Armenia backs in Nagorno-Karabakh says it’s lost more than 200 soldiers and 11 civilians in the latest fighting. Azerbaijan said 20 of its civilians have been killed; it hasn’t released figures on military casualties.
Aliyev has vowed to continue the military campaign until Armenian forces leave Nagorno-Karabakh and seven surrounding districts that were taken during a war after the Soviet Union’s collapse in 1991. The violence that began Sunday is more intense and widespread than at any time since Russia brokered a 1994 cease-fire to halt the war that killed about 30,000 and displaced more than a million people.
The confrontation adds to tensions between Russia and Turkey over proxy conflicts in Syria and Libya. Russia has an army base in Armenia and the two nations have a mutual-defense pact, though it doesn’t cover the disputed territory. Azerbaijan, which has close historical and linguistic ties to Turkey, hosted large-scale joint exercises with the Turkish military in August.
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