Wednesday,
Shelling Intensifies In Karabakh Conflict Zone
• Artak Khulian
NAGORNO KARABAKH -- A view of a newly built natal center damaged by shelling by
Azerbaijan's artillery in Stepanakert, .
Nagorno-Karabakh’s two largest towns again came under rocket attack on Wednesday
as deadly shelling of civilian areas in the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict zone
intensified following the collapse of a U.S.-brokered ceasefire deal.
The Karabakh capital Stepanakert was heavily shelled by Azerbaijani forces
throughout the day. An RFE/RL correspondent heard several particularly loud
explosions from a local bomb shelter early in the afternoon.
Some of the rockets struck Karabakh’s main civilian hospital and a maternity
clinic adjacent to it. The hospital director, Mher Musayelian, said there were
limited numbers of medical workers and patients at both medical establishments
during the attack. None of them was seriously injured as a result.
There was also further damage inflicted on Stepanakert’s residential areas. No
casualties were immediately reported there. Most of the city’s remaining
residents continued to stay in basements and bomb shelters.
NAGORNO KARABAKH -- Medical workers take refuge in a basement of a hospital as
doctors perform surgery during shelling by Azerbaijan's artillery in
Stepanakert, .
Karabakh authorities said that the shelling of the nearby town of Shushi
(Shusha) left one person dead and two others wounded. It completely destroyed a
local house and seriously damaged a school building located nearby.
“We are already used to such things. What can we do?” a middle-aged Shushi
resident told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service. He said he still has no plans to move
to Armenia where tens of thousands of other Karabakh Armenians have taken refuge
since the outbreak of the war on September 27.
For its part, Azerbaijan accused Armenian forces of continuing to target
Azerbaijani towns and villages located close to the Karabakh “line of contact.”
It said one such rocket strike killed on Wednesday 14 residents of Barda, a town
northeast of Karabakh.
Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov phoned the U.S., Russian and French
diplomats leading the OSCE Minsk Group to discuss the reported strike.
AZERBAIJAN -- An investigator walks near a burnt car after shells hit a street
in the town of Barda, .
The three mediators met with Bayramov and Armenian Foreign Minister Zohrab
Mnatsakanian in Washington late last week. In a joint statement, they said they
will hold more talks with the two ministers in Geneva on Thursday to try to
“reach agreement on, and begin implementation … of all steps necessary to
achieve a peaceful settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.”
The statement came right after the announcement of a fresh Armenian-Azerbaijani
ceasefire agreement brokered by Washington. The ceasefire was due to come into
force on Monday morning. Fighting in and around Karabakh has continued since
then, however.
Meanwhile, Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev said on Wednesday that he is
ready to meet with Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian in Moscow “without
any preconditions.”
“I don’t know how effective [such a meeting] would be … But if there is such a
proposal [from Russia] we will positively consider it,” Aliyev told the Interfax
news agency.
Armenians Donate Over $150 Million To Karabakh
• Sargis Harutyunyan
NAGORNO-KARABAKH -- Civilians gather in the basement of an art art school used
as a bomb shelter in the town of Martuni, October 14, 2020
People in Armenia and its worldwide Diaspora have donated at least $152 million
for humanitarian and economic aid to war-torn Nagorno-Karabakh provided by a
pan-Armenian charity.
The Yerevan-based All-Armenian Fund Hayastan launched an international
fundraising campaign immediately after the outbreak of the Armenian-Azerbaijani
war in and around Karabakh on September 27. Hundreds of thousands of Armenians
from around the world have responded to its appeal for urgent aid to Karabakh
and its population severely affected by the fighting.
Data released by Hayastan on Wednesday shows that the charity supported by the
Armenian government has raised nearly half of the money from the United States.
Armenia is the second largest source of the donations to Karabakh, having
contributed a third of the total sum so far.
“According to preliminary estimates, at least half a million people from around
the world have participated in this fundraising campaign,” Haykak Arshamian,
Hayastan’s executive director, told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service. “But this number
will rise significantly after we process all data. This is a quite lengthy
process.”
The single largest donation worth $10 million has been made by the U.S.-based
Armenian General Benevolent Union.
Hayastan has also received $3.5 million from Eduardo Eurnekian, an Argentine
billionaire businessman of Armenian descent. Russian-Armenian tycoon Samvel
Karapetian and two Armenian-American benefactors have contributed $3 million
each.
Arshamian said that a large part of the sum raised by Hayastan is already being
spent for humanitarian purposes in coordination with the Armenian government.
That includes relief aid provided to Karabakh civilians displaced by the
fighting, he said.
According to authorities in Stepanakert, some 90,000 Karabakh Armenians making
up around 60 percent of the territory’s population have fled their homes. They
have been relocated to other parts of Karabakh or taken refuge in Armenia.
Stepanakert, virtually all other Karabakh towns and dozens of villages have been
heavily shelled by Azerbaijani forces for the past month. The shelling has
caused extensive damage to many homes and public infrastructures.
Erdogan Seeks Russian-Turkish Push For Karabakh Peace
NAGORNO KARABAKH -- An Armenian soldier fires artillery on the front line on
October 25, 2020.
Turkey and Russia should jointly push for a quick resolution of the
Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on
Wednesday, commenting on his latest phone call with Russian President Vladimir
Putin.
“We held good talks with Putin [late on Tuesday.] We discussed Karabakh in
detail,” Erdogan told the Turkish parliament in remarks cited by the TASS news
agency.
“We said: let’s finish all this in the Caucasus. If you want, we will jointly
take steps, talk to the parties,” he said.
Erdogan said he specifically proposed that he and Putin talk to the leaders of
Azerbaijan and Armenia respectively. “Let delegations meet. I’m sure that we
will get a result,” he added.
According to the Kremlin’s readout of the call, Putin voiced serious concern
about the continuing hostilities in and around Karabakh and what he called a
growing involvement of “terrorists from the Middle East” in them.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov insisted that the two presidents did not discuss
a possible Turkish involvement in Armenian-Azerbaijani peace talks. He
reiterated that Turkey, which fully supports Azerbaijan in the conflict, cannot
become a mediator without Armenia’s consent.
Armenia has always ruled out any Turkish mediation. It maintains that Turkey is
directly involved in the Karabakh war by providing weapons, Turkish military
personnel and Middle Eastern mercenaries to Azerbaijan. Ankara denies that.
Armenian-Azerbaijani peace talks have long been mediated by Russia, France and
the United States, the three co-chairs of the Minsk Group.
American, French and Russian diplomats are expected to meet again with the
Armenian and Azerbaijani foreign ministers in Geneva on Thursday. They said at
the weekend that they are planning to discuss not only a new ceasefire regime in
the conflict zone but also a Karabakh settlement proposed by the three mediating
nations.
Erdogan again hit out at the Minsk Group co-chairs on Wednesday, saying that
they have for years “stalled for time, rather than solved the problem.”
Iran To Propose Karabakh Peace Plan
• Gevorg Stamboltsian
RUSSIA -- Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif speaks during a news
conference following a meeting with his Russian counterpart in Moscow, June 16,
2020
Iran announced late on Tuesday that it has drawn up a plan to resolve the
Nagorno-Karabakh conflict in the hope of stopping fighting between Armenian and
Azerbaijani forces continuing along its northwestern border.
“This plan approved by the country’s supreme leadership will be presented today
or tomorrow,” said Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif. “We are going
to present it in Moscow and Yerevan as well.”
Zarif did not divulge any details of the plan. Iranian Foreign Ministry
spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh also shed no light on it when he spoke at a news
briefing in Tehran. He said only that it can put an end to the long-running
conflict over Karabakh.
Zarif’s deputy Abbas Araghchi reportedly travelled to Baku earlier on Tuesday to
submit the peace proposals to Azerbaijan’s leadership.
International efforts to resolve the Karabakh conflict have long been jointly
led by the United States, Russia and France through the OSCE Minsk Group.
The American, French and Russian diplomats co-chairing the group are scheduled
to hold fresh talks with the Armenian and Azerbaijani foreign ministers in
Geneva on Thursday. They said at the weekend that they are planning to discuss
not only a new ceasefire regime in the conflict zone but also a Karabakh
settlement proposed by the three mediating nations.
An area south of Karabakh and north of Iran has been one of the epicenters of
the ongoing war that broke out on September 27. Tehran says that dozens of
rockets and other shells have mistakenly landed near Iranian border villages
over the past month.
According to Iranian news agencies, Araghchi toured Iranian districts adjacent
to the area before heading to Baku. He warned the warring sides against causing
any damage to Iranian hydroelectric plants and reservoirs on the Arax river
marking the Iranian border.
Iran’s army and Revolutionary Guards have reportedly been massing troops along
the border. The army began on Sunday major exercises in Iran’s Western
Azerbaijan province bordering Armenia, Azerbaijan and Turkey.
“We will not tolerate any threats to our country’s borders,” a top Iranian
general was reported to say on Tuesday.
Zarif said that Tehran will also not tolerate the presence of Sunni Islamist
militants and “other terrorists” in the region. He clearly alluded to reports
that Turkey has recruited scores of Syrian and Libyan mercenaries for the
Azerbaijani army. Both Ankara and Baku deny those reports.
Russian President Vladimir Putin again discussed the matter with his Turkish
counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan in a phone call on Tuesday. According to the
Kremlin, Putin expressed serious concern over the “increasingly large-scale
involvement of terrorists from the Middle East” in the Karabakh war.
Reprinted on ANN/Armenian News with permission from RFE/RL
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