YEREVAN March 9
HIGHLIGHT: Statements by Azerbaijan’s different officials concerning the Nagorno-Karabakh crisis have noticeably toughened which cannot help create the atmosphere required for negotiations, Armenia’s Foreign Ministry said on Saturday.
YEREVAN, March 9. /TASS/. Statements by Azerbaijan’s different officials concerning the Nagorno-Karabakh crisis have noticeably toughened which cannot help create the atmosphere required for negotiations, Armenia’s Foreign Ministry said on Saturday.
"Recently, statements made by officials at different levels of Azerbaijan’s executive power over a solution to the Karabakh crisis have noticeably toughened. Particularly, they stress the possibility of using the force or threaten to use it – a military solution, which is reprehensible. This rhetoric cannot help create the atmosphere needed for the talks," the Armenian foreign ministry said in a statement.
According to the statement, Baku allegedly pledges to use force but no details are given.
"Moreover, against the background of a meeting between the two countries’ leaders [Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev], Azerbaijan initiates an offensive military exercise and fails to notify of it in advance, regardless of international commitments," the statement says.
"Armenia has reiterated that it cannot accept this attitude as well as coercion to negotiation at gunpoint," the statement says.
Baku’s stance
On March 5, Azerbaijan’s Foreign Minister Elmar Mamedyarov said that Yerevan’s "latest statements" were derailing the negotiating process on Nagorno-Karabakh. As an example, Mamedyarov cited the words of Armenia’s National Security Service head Artur Vanetsyan concerning a settlement program for Nagorno-Karabakh. During his visit to the area, Vanetsyan said the settlement program "will become the key security guarantee" for Armenia.
Azerbaijan’s Defense Ministry reported that a major military exercise, involving up to 10,000 military personnel, would take place in the country on March 11 through 15.
History of Nagorno-Karabakh conflict
The highland region of Nagorno-Karabakh (Mountainous Karabakh) is a mostly Armenian-populated enclave inside the sovereign territory of Azerbaijan. It was the first zone of inter-ethnic tensions and violence to appear on the map of the former USSR in February 1988. Then, the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Region declared independence from Azerbaijan, a republic within the Soviet Union at the time. In 1992-1994, hostilities broke out in the region between pro-Baku forces and Armenian residents, which resulted in the Nagorno-Karabakh’s de facto independence. In 1994, a ceasefire was reached but the relations between Azerbaijan and Armenia have been strained since then.
Since 1992, the Minsk Group of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) co-chaired by Russia, France and the US have been holding talks to find a peaceful solution to the conflict.