NAGORNO-KARABAKH RECOGNITION

The International News
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Nov 24 2009
Pakistan

Armenia warns Azeris Azerbaijan angry at Armenian thaw with Turkey

YEREVAN: Armenia said on Monday it could recognise breakaway
Nagorno-Karabakh as an independent state if Azerbaijan carries out
its threat of military action to take back the mountainous territory.

Tensions over the Armenian-populated region, which broke away from
Muslim Azerbaijan with Christian Armenian backing in the early 1990s,
are rising as Armenia pursues an historic thaw with Azeri ally Turkey
to the anger of oil-producing Azerbaijan.

Armenian President Serzh Sarksyan and Azerbaijan’s Ilham Aliyev held
talks on Sunday on the rebel territory at the heart of the South
Caucasus, a strategic crossroads between East and West and key transit
region for oil and gas to Europe.

In comments broadcast on Saturday, Aliyev warned that Azeri patience
was running thin and that without a breakthrough soon, Azeri troops
were ready to take back the territory by force.

Sarksyan’s spokesman Samvel Farmanyan said in a statement:" It should
be noted that Armenia so far has not recognised the independence
of Nagorno-Karabakh for one reason–so that it would not become an
obstacle to peaceful negotiation."

"If peaceful negotiations break down and military action begins, then
nothing stands in the way of Armenia recognizing the independence of
Nagorno-Karabakh." Fighting in Nagorno-Karabakh erupted as the Soviet
Union headed towards its 1991 collapse. Some 30,000 people died and
more than 1 million were displaced before a ceasefire in 1994.

Ethnic Armenian forces took control of the territory of 100,000 people
and seven surrounding Azeri districts, including a land corridor
to Armenia.

With no peace deal, soldiers on the frontline continue to be picked
off by landmines and snipers. No state has recognised Nagorno-Karabakh
as independent.

A bid this year by Turkey and Armenia to bury a century of hostility
stemming from the allegedly mass killing of Armenians by Ottoman
Turks has thrust the dispute back into the diplomatic spotlight.

Ankara says it wants Armenian forces to pull back before it ratifies
a deal to establish diplomatic ties with Yerevan and open the border
it closed in 1993 in solidarity with Azerbaijan.

Azerbaijan, courted by Europe to supply gas for the planned Nabucco
pipeline, has reacted angrily to the thaw, fearing it will lose
leverage in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

Media reports in Azerbaijan and Turkey speculate about a possible
Armenian pullback from the Azeri districts adjacent to Nagorno-Karabakh
in order to clinch the deal with Turkey. Farmanyan said "such a
question is not being discussed."

Mediators from the United States, Russia and France gave little away
on Sunday after Aliyev and Sarksyan’s sixth meeting this year, saying
they made "important progress" but also met some difficulties.

They said they would work with the sides’ foreign ministers ahead of
an OSCE Ministerial Council in Athens on Dec. 1-2.