Attacks Continue After Armenia, Azerbaijan Agree Truce

Date: 10 October 2020 - 21:48

News ID: ۸۳۶۸۵

MOSCOW (Dispatches) — Armenia and Azerbaijan agreed to a Russia-brokered ceasefire in Nagorno-Karabakh starting Saturday, but immediately accused each other of derailing the deal intended to end the worst outbreak of hostilities in the separatist Azerbaijani region in more than a quarter-century.
The two sides traded blame for breaking the truce that took effect at noon (0800 GMT) with new attacks, and Azerbaijan’s top diplomat said the truce never entered into force.
The ceasefire announcement came overnight after 10 hours of talks in Moscow sponsored by Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. The deal stipulated that the ceasefire should pave the way for talks on settling the conflict.
If the truce holds, it would mark a major diplomatic coup for Russia, which has a security pact with Armenia but also cultivated warm ties with Azerbaijan. But the agreement was immediately challenged by mutual claims of violations.
Minutes after the truce took force, the Armenian military accused Azerbaijan of shelling the area near the town of Kapan in southeastern Armenia, killing one civilian. Azerbaijan’s Defense Ministry rejected the Armenian accusations as a "provocation.”
The Azerbaijani military, in turn, accused Armenia of striking the Terter and Agdam regions of Azerbaijan with missiles and then attempting to launch offensives in the Agdere-Terter and the Fizuli-Jabrail areas. Azerbaijan’s Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov charged that "conditions for implementing the humanitarian ceasefire are currently missing” amid the continuing Armenian shelling.
The latest outburst of fighting between Azerbaijani and Armenian forces began Sept. 27 and left hundreds of people dead in the biggest escalation of the decades-old conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh since a separatist Armenian war there ended in 1994. The region lies in Azerbaijan but has been under control of ethnic Armenian forces backed by Armenia.
Since the start of the latest fighting, Armenia said it was open to a ceasefire, while Azerbaijan insisted that it should be conditional on the Armenian forces’ withdrawal from Nagorno-Karabakh, arguing that the failure of international efforts to negotiate a political settlement for about 30 years left it no other choice but to resort to force.
The foreign ministers of Armenia and Azerbaijan signed the truce in Moscow after Russian President Vladimir Putin had brokered it in a series of calls with President Ilham Aliyev of Azerbaijan and Armenia’s Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian.
Russia has co-sponsored peace talks on Nagorno-Karabakh together with the United States and France as co-chairs of the so-called Minsk Group, which is working under the auspices of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. They haven’t produced any deal, leaving Azerbaijan increasingly exasperated.
Speaking in an address to the nation Friday hours before the ceasefire deal was reached, Aliyev insisted on Azerbaijan’s right to reclaim its territory by force after nearly three decades of international talks that "haven’t yielded an inch of progress.”
His aide, Hikmat Hajiyev, said that the Minsk Group must offer a concrete plan for the Armenian forces’ withdrawal from Nagorno-Karabakh. "There will be no peace in the South Caucasus until the Armenian troops pull out from the occupied territories,” he said.
Foreign Minister Bayramov also accused France of not being neutral when it comes to mediating the conflict.
He told a news conference that France had violated the principle of neutrality, while the Azeri side had not noticed any such violations by Russia.
Fighting with heavy artillery, warplanes and drones has engulfed Karabakh, with both sides accusing each other of targeting residential areas and civilian infrastructure.
According to the Nagorno-Karabakh military, 404 of its servicemen have been killed since Sept. 27. Azerbaijan hasn’t provided details on its military losses. Scores of civilians on both sides also have been killed.
Foreign Minister Muhammad Javad Zarif said, "Iran welcomes the cessation of hostilities in Nagorno-Karabakh as a step towards peace.”
"We urge our neighbors Azerbaijan and Armenia to engage in substantive dialogue based on respect for international law and territorial integrity. We appreciate constructive efforts of our Russian neighbors.”
The Turkish Foreign Ministry said the deal was "an important first step, but cannot replace a lasting solution.”
"Since the beginning, Turkey has always underlined that it would only support those solutions which were acceptable to Azerbaijan,” it said.