U.S. RECEIVES ASSURANCES FROM ARMENIA, AZERBAIJAN ON CEASE-FIRE
By Desmond Butler

Associated Press
2:43 p.m. March 5, 2008

WASHINGTON – A U.S. official said Wednesday he has received assurances
from Armenia and Azerbaijan that they have returned to a cease-fire
along the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh after shooting broke
out in recent days.

After meetings in Baku with officials including Azerbaijani President
Ilham Aliyev, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Matthew Bryza is now
heading to Armenia to try to encourage talks between the government
and opposition figures who claim fraud in last month’s election.

Reached by telephone en route to Armenia’s capital, Yerevan, Bryza
said that he intends to deliver a stern message in Armenia about
recent violence between police and demonstrators that has left eight
people dead and more than 100 injured.

"We simply deplore the violence," he said. "That simply can’t be
repeated."

Bryza said he intends to press the government to lift a state of
emergency it declared Saturday and to ask both sides to move their
dispute from the streets to the negotiating table.

Demonstrators have been rallying for presidential candidate Levon
Ter-Petrosian, who has appealed to the country’s constitutional
court to overturn the results of the Feb. 19 election. Ter-Petrosian
finished a distant second to Prime Minister Serge Sarkisian in the
official results.

Western observers issued an overall positive assessment of the
election, but noted serious flaws, especially during the vote count.

The opposition says Sarkisian stole the election by resorting to
vote-buying, ballot stuffing and pressuring media to skew coverage
in his favor. Several opposition members said they were beaten on
election day to prevent them from monitoring the vote. The government
denies any wrongdoing.

After his meetings in Azerbaijan and a telephone call with Armenian
Foreign Minister Vartan Oskanian on Tuesday, Bryza says he is satisfied
that tensions in Nagorno-Karabakh have subsided.

"Based on everyone I have talked to it is clear that the shooting
has stopped and the level of tension is decreasing," said Bryza,
who has been the chief U.S. mediator to end the conflict in the region.

Armenian and ethnic Armenian local forces drove the Azerbaijani army
out of Nagorno-Karabakh in one of the bloodiest conflicts of the
post-Soviet era.

Some 30,000 people were killed and about 1 million were forced from
their homes during six years of fighting that ended with the 1994
cease-fire.

Nagorno-Karabakh’s separatist ethnic Armenian government is not
recognized internationally, despite more than a decade of efforts by
foreign mediators led by the United States, Russia and France to help
reach a resolution.