Armenia and Azerbaijan battle over separatist region

Trump says U.S. will seek to stop violence between Armenia, Azerbaijan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump said on Sunday that the United States would seek to stop violence which has ignited between Armenia and Azerbaijan, two former Soviet republics which fought a war in the 1990s.

“We’re looking at it very strongly,” the president said in a Sunday evening press briefing. “We have a lot of good relationships in that area. We’ll see if we can stop it.”

The violence left at least 16 military and several civilians dead on Sunday in the heaviest clashes between Armenia and Azerbaijan since 2016, reviving concerns about stability in the South Caucasus, a corridor for pipelines carrying oil and gas to world markets.

France and Turkey at odds as Karabakh fighting divides NATO allies

YEREVAN/BAKU (Reuters) - NATO allies France and Turkey traded angry recriminations on Wednesday as international tensions mounted over the fiercest clashes between Azerbaijan and ethnic Armenian forces since the mid-1990s...

Some of Turkey’s NATO allies are increasingly alarmed by Ankara’s stance on Nagorno-Karabakh, a breakaway region inside Turkey’s close ally Azerbaijan that is run by ethnic Armenians but is not recognised by any country as an independent republic...

French President Emmanuel Macron, whose country is home to many people of Armenian ancestry, hit back during a visit to Latvia. He said France was extremely concerned by “warlike messages” from Turkey “which essentially remove any of Azerbaijan’s inhibitions in reconquering Nagorno-Karabakh”.

“And that we won’t accept,” he said...

Armenia says ready to engage with OSCE to re-establish Nagorno-Karabakh ceasefire

YEREVAN (Reuters) - Armenia’s foreign ministry said on Friday it was ready to engage with the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) to re-establish a ceasefire in Nagorno-Karabakh, where fighting has been raging since Sunday.

France, Russia and the United States, co-chairs of the OSCE’s Minsk Group, set up in 1992 to mediate in the conflict between Azerbaijan and ethnic Armenians over the mountainous enclave in the South Caucasus, called for an immediate ceasefire on Thursday. But Turkey said the three big powers should have no role in peace moves.

Armenia recalls ambassador to Israel over arms sales to Azerbaijan

YEREVAN/TEL AVIV (Reuters) - Armenia said on Thursday it had recalled its ambassador to Israel for consultations over Israeli arms sales to Azerbaijan.

Azerbaijan has acknowledged using Israeli-made weapons in its fighting with ethnic Armenian forces around Nagorno-Karabakh, where heavy clashes this week have drawn international calls for an immediate ceasefire.

Protesting against the Israeli weapons exports, Armenian foreign ministry spokeswoman Anna Naghdalyan said “Israel’s workstyle is unacceptable. The ministry has to call back its ambassador in Israel.”

Israel’s foreign ministry said it regretted Armenia’s decision to withdraw its ambassador...

Armenian-Backed Forces Say They Hit Base in Azerbaijani City

Armenian-backed forces in the breakaway enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh said they struck a military airport in Azerbaijan’s second-largest city on Sunday in a major escalation of fighting between the former Soviet republics. Azeri President Ilham Aliyev’s office said the missiles that hit Ganca came from neighboring Armenia, an allegation the Armenian Defense Ministry denied. The missile strike killed

Azeri President Ilham Aliyev’s office said the missiles that hit Ganca came from neighboring Armenia, an allegation the Armenian Defense Ministry denied. The missile strike killed one civilian and injured 32 others in a densely populated area of the city and did not hit an air base, the Azeri government in Baku said.

Nagorno-Karabakh said it attacked the military airport in Ganca in retaliation for Azerbaijan’s bombing of Stepanakert, the enclave’s biggest city. Arayik Harutyunyan, the disputed territory’s president, warned that its forces are now targeting military sites in large cities of Azerbaijan.

Armenia and Azerbaijan accuse each other of violating Nagorno-Karabakh ceasefire

YEREVAN/BAKU (Reuters) - Armenia and Azerbaijan accused each other of swiftly and seriously violating the terms of a ceasefire in Nagorno-Karabakh on Saturday, raising questions about how meaningful the truce, brokered by Russia, would turn out to be.

The ceasefire, clinched after marathon talks in Moscow advocated by President Vladimir Putin, was meant to halt fighting to allow ethnic Armenian forces in Nagorno-Karabakh and Azeri forces to swap prisoners and war dead...

Within minutes of the truce taking effect from midday, both sides accused each other of breaking it...

New clashes in Nagorno-Karabakh; Pompeo says Turkey makes situation worse

YEREVAN/BAKU (Reuters) - Armenian and Azeri forces fought new clashes on Friday, defying hopes of ending nearly three weeks of fighting over the Nagorno-Karabakh enclave, and U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo blamed Turkey for inflaming the situation by arming the Azeris...

Pompeo said Turkey had worsened the conflict by providing resources to Azerbaijan. A diplomatic resolution was needed, rather than “third-party countries coming in to lend their firepower to what is already a powder keg of a situation,” he said in an interview with broadcaster WSB Atlanta.

Ankara accuses Armenia of illegally occupying Azeri territory. Armenia says Turkey has encouraged Azerbaijan to pursue a military solution to the conflict, putting Armenian civilians in danger.

Armenia’s foreign ministry said Foreign Minister Zohrab Mnatsakanyan had spoken by phone with United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres, asking the international community to “neutralise” Azeri actions which he said posed “an existential danger of the people of Nagorno-Karabakh”.

Meanwhile Iran tweeted that its foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif had offered the Azeri side Teheran’s help with the peace process...

The History Behind the Violence in Nagorno-Karabakh

A war broke out on Sept. 27 in the mountainous region of Nagorno-Karabakh, also known as the Republic of Artsakh or the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic (NKR). The region—no bigger than the state of Delaware—hosts a population of around 150,000 people, almost all of whom are ethnically Armenian. It is internationally recognized as lying within Azerbaijan’s borders but sees itself as a de facto independent republic, with its own parliament, president and army.

Yet the conflict extends beyond an internal fight between Azerbaijan and a breakaway republic. Armenia does not claim ownership of Nagorno-Karabakh but considers itself the guarantor of the security of the ethnic Armenians living in the region and is NKR’s lifeline to the outside world. Turkey is also a player in the conflict: It has pledged support for Azerbaijan, closing its border with Armenia and reaffirming Azerbaijan’s claims to territorial integrity. Amid the current crisis, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan pledged to “support our Azerbaijani brothers with all our means as always,” including military assistance. Lastly, Russia considers the Caucasus its “near abroad,” brokering cease-fires each time the conflict escalates but also selling arms to both sides.

Though sporadic sniper fire across the border has been common since the Karabakh War “paused” in a cease-fire in 1994, there have been two major conflagrations where troops have attempted to cross the Line of Contact, which lies in the Murovdag mountain range between Azerbaijan and NKR and separates the Azerbaijan armed forces and NKR Defense Army. The first was a four-day war in April 2016, and the second is the current conflict. The present violence has escalated to the worst the region has seen in decades. Both Armenia and Azerbaijan have declared martial law. And in Azerbaijan, curfews have been enforced, much of the internet has been blocked and other civil freedoms have been limited. To understand the competing territorial claims fueling the conflict, it is important to first understand the history of the region...