Armenia prez urges pressure on Azerbaijan to avert war
Armenia’s President Serzh Sarkisian has urged international powers to step up pressure on Azerbaijan to avoid all-out war over the disputed Nagorny Karabakh region, accusing his nation’s arch-foe of military “blackmail”. “The danger of a new war is constant and will persist until Azerbaijan is persuaded that there is no military solution to the conflict,” Sarkisian told AFP in an interview ahead of a visit to France.
Fears that the decades-long Nagorny Karabakh dispute could escalate have risen since sporadic firing across the volatile frontline surged last April into the worst violence since a 1994 truce. A ceasefire brokered by Moscow stilled several days of bloodshed but long-standing mediators from Russia, the United States and France have since struggled to restart a stalled peace process.
Sarkisian-who will meet French President Francois Hollande in Paris on Wednesday-accused his Azerbaijani counterpart Ilham Aliyev of sabotaging any progress by threatening to start fighting unless he gets his way. “He said Azerbaijan will not start a war if Armenia fulfils its demands.
I said that this is blackmail, not a compromise,” the Armenian leader said. Sarkisian urged Paris, Moscow, and Washington to “show what price one of the sides will pay if it initiates an attack.” “That will have a sobering effect,” he said.
‘A matter of time’
Baku and Yerevan have feuded over the Nagorny Karabakh region since Armenian separatists seized the territory from Azerbaijan in a war that claimed some 30,000 lives in the early 1990s. Energy-rich Azerbaijan, whose military spending exceeds Armenia’s entire state budget, has repeatedly threatened to take back the breakaway region by force but Moscow-allied Armenia has vowed to crush any military offensive. The war ended in a fragile 1994 truce but the two sides never signed a firm peace deal and Sarkisian warned that fears of a new surge in fighting are growing.
“Public opinion in Armenia is that the resumption of hostilities is a matter of time-maybe weeks or months-and the commander-in-chief and defense minister must be prepared that a war could start tomorrow,” Sarkisian said. “I don’t think a fresh war is an immediate threat, but nothing is ruled out when one deals with an unpredictable neighbor.” — AFP