Agence France Presse — English
December 9, 2004 Thursday 1:34 PM GMT

Azerbaijan cuts off rail to rival Armenia

BAKU

Azerbaijan shut down its cargo rail traffic to other Caucasus
republics Thursday because it feared that some of the goods were
being delivered to its arch-foe Armenia, officials said.

Azerbaijan’s rail ministry said the traffic was cut off to
neighboring Georgia, whose rail line leads to Armenia, because “we
have received information that part of the cargo sent to Azerbaijan
from Russia is meant for Armenia,” Moscow’s regional ally.

The Azeri rail ministry told AFP that 1,500 rail cars holding oil and
grain were intercepted at the Azeri-Georgian border.

The rail ministry official said that Moscow and Baku had signed a
1998 agreement that goods from Russia headed for Armenia could not be
transferred by Azerbaijan.

“That is why we have every right to do this,” rail ministry spokesman
Nazyr Azmamedov said.

Neighboring Azerbaijan and Armenia are still technically at war over
control of Nagorno-Karabakh, a sparsely populated range of mountains
with a mainly ethnic Armenian population that is formally part of
Azerbaijan.

A five-year war between the two countries ended with Armenia taking
control of the enclave in 1994. An estimated 35,000 people were
killed in the fighting and one million people fled their homes.

Georgia sits on the northern side of the two countries’ border,
providing another rail link between the two feuding states.