Azerbaijan Prez criticises mediators; fighting rages on

Baku, Oct. 3: Heavy fighting between Armenia and Azerbaijan continued Saturday in their conflict over the separatist territory of Nagorno-Karabakh, while Azerbaijan’s president criticised the international mediators who have tried for decades to resolve the dispute. Fighting that started September 27 is the worst to afflict NagornoKarabakh and surrounding areas since the 1994 end of a war that left the region in Azerbaijan under the control of ethnic Armenian local forces backed by Armenia.

Shushan Stepanian, a spokeswoman for the Armenian Defence Ministry, said that “intensive fighting is taking place along the entire front line,” and claimed that Armenian forces had shot down three planes. Azerbaijan’s defence ministry did not respond to the claim of planes being shot down, but said Armenian forces had shelled civilian territory within Azerbaijan, including the city of Terter. Nagorno-Karabakh officials have said more than 150 servicemen on their side have been killed so far. Azerbaijani authorities haven’t given details on their military casualties but said 19 civilians have been killed and 55 more wounded.

Nagorno-Karabakh was a designated autonomous region within Azerbaijan during the Soviet era. It claimed independence from Azerbaijan in 1991, about three months before the Soviet Union’s collapse. Full-scale war that broke out in 1992 killed an estimated 30,000 people. By the time it ended in 1994, Armenian forces not only held Nagorno-Karabakh itself but substantial areas outside the territory’s formal borders.

Several United Nations Security Council resolutions have called for withdrawal from those areas, which the Armenian forces have disregarded. Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev said in a television interview that the forces must withdraw from those areas before fighting can stop.

In the interview with alJazeera, a transcript of which was distributed Saturday by the presidential press office, Aliyev criticised the so-called Minsk Group of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe, which has tried to mediate a resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh dispute.