Associated Press Worldstream
January 27, 2005 Thursday 2:24 PM Eastern Time

Azerbaijan reports soldier killed by ethnic Armenian forces in
disputed enclave

by AIDA SULTANOVA; Associated Press Writer

BAKU, Azerbaijan

An Azerbaijani soldier was killed on the cease-fire line separating
government troops from ethnic Armenian forces controlling the
Nagorno-Karabakh enclave and a swath of surrounding territory in the
ex-Soviet republic, the Defense Ministry said Thursday.

The military chief in the disputed enclave, meanwhile, said
strengthened defenses on the cease-fire line mean that any
Azerbaijani attempt to take back the territory will be thwarted and
could prompt “successful counterattacks.”

The latest death on the dividing line and the bellicose warning added
to tension that persists more than a decade after a 1994 cease-fire
ended a six-year war over Nagorno-Karabakh that killed 30,000 people
and drove a million from their homes.

Azerbaijan’s Defense Ministry said ethnic Armenian forces opened fire
near the village of Shurabad shortly before midnight Wednesday,
killing an Azerbaijani soldier.

Gunfire sporadically breaks out between the opposing forces, and the
dispute has raised fears of renewed war. International efforts have
failed to produce a settlement between Azerbaijan and Armenia, which
supports Nagorno-Karabakh’s internationally unrecognized government.

Also Wednesday, Nagorno-Karabakh defense chief Seiran Oganian said
that “large volume of construction work” done on the front line over
the past year would enable ethnic Armenian forces to “freely conduct
trench fighting in the case military action begins, turning aside all
attempts by the enemy to move forward.”

“We are prepared … not just to defend ourselves but to conduct
successful counterstrikes,” Oganian said.

Ethnic Armenian forces also control a large amount of adjacent
territory, including land that links the enclave with Armenia.
Disputes over the additional territory have been one of the factors
preventing Armenia and Azerbaijan from settling the conflict.

International monitors from the Organization for Security and
Cooperation in Europe, which has been seeking to foster a settlement
between Armenia and Azerbaijan for a decade, are due to tour the
ethnic Armenian-held territory in the coming days.

Oganian, who spoke at a news conference, said that Nagorno-Karabakh
authorities “cannot prohibit our citizens to farm in these
territories.”

Bernard Fassier, the French co-chairman of the OSCE’s Minsk Group,
said at a news conference in Baku on Thursday that the OSCE could not
resolve the dispute on its own.

The OSCE “can provide help in the process of dialogue, conducting
negotiations, creating productive atmosphere, but it cannot resolve
the conflict for you,” Fassier told Azerbaijan’s President Ilham
Aliyev.

Fassier said OSCE representatives would travel to Nagorno-Karabakh on
Jan. 29 for a fact-finding mission.

Associated Press writer Avet Demourian in Yerevan, Armenia,
contributed to this report.