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The United States on Thursday expressed concern about escalating tensions on the Armenia-Azerbaijan border after their war over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region, and called for the release of six Armenian soldiers detained by Baku’s army.
“We call on both sides to urgently and peacefully resolve this incident,” State Department spokeswoman Ned Price said in a statement.
“We also continue to call on Azerbaijan to release immediately all prisoners of war and other detainees, and we remind Azerbaijan of its obligations under international humanitarian law to treat all detainees humanely.”
Washington will consider any movements in the non-demarcated part of the border area as “provocative and unnecessary,” the statement said.
The United States rejected any use of force to impose a definition of the border, and called on forces from both sides to return to the positions they held on May 11, before the latest flare-up in tensions.
Price also said the United States wanted both Armenia and Azerbaijan to return to the negotiating table.
Last year, the two ex-Soviet countries in the Caucasus region fought for six weeks for control of Nagorno-Karabakh, an ethnic Armenian region in Azerbaijan that had been controlled by separatists for decades. Some 6,000 people were killed.
Russia eventually brokered an agreement between Yerevan and Baku that saw Armenia hand large sections of territory it had controlled for decades to Azerbaijan.
The capture by Azerbaijan of six Armenian soldiers on Thursday raised the stakes, with Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan calling for the deployment to the border of international observers.
“The situation is tense and explosive,” Pashinyan said.