Tensions mount over disputed Karabakh regionby Simon Ostrovsky

Relief Web

Source: Agence France-Presse (AFP)

Date: 20 Mar 2005

BAKU, March 20 (AFP) – Long-simmering tensions over the disputed
enclave of Karabakh in the volatile Caucasus have flared recently,
sparking fears that the escalation of hostilities along a ceasefire
line between Armenian and Azeri forces could lead to a new war.

“In the eleven years since the ceasefire was signed there have only
been two or three occasions when tensions were at this level, and each
time the situation could have deteriorated into war,” Azad Isazade,
a prominent military analyst in Azerbaijan and a former information
official in the 1988-1994 war for Karabakh told AFP.

Armenia has controlled Karabakh and seven surrounding regions which
make up 14 percent of Azerbaijan’s internationally recognized territory
since the two former Soviet republics ended large-scale hostilities
with a ceasefire in 1994.

But an escalation of ceasefire breaches and a mounting death toll
reported in recent weeks by the Azeri media have given observers
pause and caused concern in Washington, as efforts to resolve the
territorial dispute diplomatically have disintegrated.

In the past month alone there have been reports of numerous exchanges
of fire between Azeri and Armenian forces resulting in the deaths of
at least four Azeris and the capture of another three. During 2004,
six Azeri soldiers were killed.

Officials in Armenian-controlled Karabakh have also confirmed the
casualties, but did not provide figures.

“This shows that the conflict is not frozen and it is necessary to
work to resolve it,” the United States’ ambassador to Azerbaijan Reno
Harnish was quoted by Azeri media as saying last week amidst calls
by the radical Karabakh Liberation Organization (KLO) in Azerbaijan
to prepare for war.

“We can only free our lands using force, we can only get results by
following the principles of force against force, blood for blood and
death to the enemy,” the KLO said in a statement.

Meanwhile the foreign ministers of the two Caucasus countries have
cancelled talks that were scheduled for this month in Prague, and
Azerbaijan’s president Ilham Aliyev said there could be no compromises
over Karabakh and last week threatened to resolve the issue “by other
means” if negotiations fail.

Raising the stakes is a four-billion-dollar oil pipeline being built by
Anglo-American BP that will represent one of the West’s main non-OPEC
sources of oil when completed later this year, and portions of which
lie dangerously close to the ceasefire line.

War over Nagorno-Karabakh ended with some 35,000 casualties and
displaced one million people. Analysts warn that today, Armenian and
Azeri armies could inflict significantly more damage onto each other,
compared with the poorly-equipped rag-tag battalions that formed
after the disintegration of the Soviet Union.

According to Isazade, today’s escalation is the result of a
geopolitical tug-of-war for dominance in the Caucasus between the
United States, backing Azerbaijan and Georgia, and Russia, which
backs Armenia.

“There have been rumors that America wants to use Azerbaijan as a
platform to attack Iran, in exchange Azerbaijan expects help getting
Karabakh back. Armenia understands this so they have been shooting
as if to say ‘we’re still here,’ probably goaded on by Russia,”
Isazade said.

But separatist officials in the self-proclaimed Nagorno Karabakh
Republic blamed the escalation on Azeri forces which they said have
been making dangerous attempts to capture new positions closer to
Armenian lines.

They are purposefully “moving their firing positions closer to the
Nagorno Karabakh defense army’s forward lines, thereby thinning the
so-called ‘no man’s land,’ which has resulted in the escalation of
tensions along the front line,” the republic’s self-styled deputy
foreign minister Masis Mailyan told AFP.

An analyst in Yerevan said the frequent shootouts were Azerbaijan’s
way of destabilizing the situation to show that negotiations headed
by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE)
were failing so that discussions could be moved to a new arena such
as the United Nations.

“They want to show that the OSCE can’t control the situation … In
the UN they hope to find the support of other Muslim nations,” said
the Stepan Safaryan, an analyst with the Armenian Center for Strategic
and National Research.

mkh-son/yad/jmy AFP 201320 GMT 03 05