THE HAGUE (Reuters) – Armenia filed a case at the World Court asserting that Azerbaijan has violated an international treaty on racial discrimination, the court said on Thursday.

A spokesperson for the Azerbaijan Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Azerbaijan would defend itself "robustly" and planned to file a countersuit accusing Armenia of the same thing.

In fighting last September to November, Azeri troops drove ethnic Armenian forces out of swathes of territory they had controlled since the 1990s in and around the Nagorno-Karabakh region, before Russia brokered a ceasefire.

In the filing, Armenia accused Azerbaijan of subjecting Armenians to racial discrimination "for decades" in violation of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, to which both states are signatories, the court said.