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Armenia and Azerbaijan reported a fourth day of fierce fighting, defying a United Nations call to halt the worst violence in decades over the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh.
Azerbaijani forces attacked overnight with drones near Nagorno-Karabakh’s capital, Stepanakert, and artillery fire is taking place along the contact line between the two militaries, Armenian Defense Ministry spokeswoman Shushan Stepanyan said Wednesday on Facebook.
“Intense battles” continue with combat operations taking place along the entire front line, with Armenian forces encircled in one area, Azerbaijan’s Defense Ministry said in a statement.
The two sides must “immediately stop fighting, de-escalate tensions and return to meaningful negotiations,” the UN Security Council said in a statement after an emergency meeting on the crisis Tuesday. Member states “strongly condemn the use of force,” it said.
While the battlefield claims couldn’t be independently verified, the deepening conflict in the Caucasus region 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. Turkey backs Azerbaijan, which hosted large-scale joint exercises by their militaries last month.
Despite decades of U.S., Russian and French mediation to resolve the conflict, fighting has repeatedly broken out since Armenians took control of Nagorno-Karabakh and seven surrounding districts from Azerbaijan in a war after the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. The violence that erupted 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.
Turkey’s declarations on the conflict are “dangerous,” French President Emmanuel Macron told reporters in Latvia’s capital, Riga, on Wednesday. France “won’t accept any escalatory message” on the crisis, he said.
“We wil continue to stand with Azerbaijan,” Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s communication chief, Fahrettin Altun, said on Twitter.
Erdogan has pledged Turkey’s support “with all its means” for Azerbaijan, saying decades of international negotiations had failed. While Russian President Vladimir Putin has urged both sides to stop fighting and resume talks, Moscow has held back so far from any intervention in its former Soviet backyard. China, the U.S. and the European Union have all urged a halt to fighting.
Greece is requesting an extraordinary meeting of the Permanent Council of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe to discuss the conflict, with the participation of Azerbaijan and Armenia, said Greek Foreign Minister Nikolaos Dendias. The escalation of tensions has serious implications for regional stability, he said, and added that “Turkey must refrain from actions and statements that move in this direction.”
Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan told Russian state TV late Tuesday that he doesn’t plan to seek assistance so far under the mutual defense pact. He repeated a claim that a Turkish F-16 jet was involved in operations with Azerbaijan and downed one of his country’s Su-25 fighters, allegations that Baku and Ankara have rejected.
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev told the same channel that he’s calling up “tens of thousands” of reservists.
The allegation of Turkey’s military involvement briefly roiled the Turkish lira and the Russian ruble Tuesday, amid market concerns the two nations could be dragged into the conflict.
The region contains important energy and transport projects that connect central Asia to Europe bypassing Russia. They include the U.S.-backed Southern Gas Corridor link and a BP Plc-operated oil pipeline that runs less than 50 kilometers (30 miles) from the conflict zone and has capacity to export as much as 1.2 million barrels daily from Baku to Turkey’s Ceyhan.
The pipelines haven’t been targeted in previous conflicts but may be vulnerable to any shift in the fighting between Armenian and Azerbaijani forces.
(BLOOMBERG)
