The two countries signed a ceasefire agreement in 1994.
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Bulgaria reiterated its position that the conflict could only be solved through peace talks mediated by the OSCE Minsk Group of negotiators in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, the assistance of the European Union, as well as through active dialogue between the leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan, according to the statement. “Without it we will face new tensions”, he said.
“There is an established process here”, United States spokesman Mark Toner said. “They are, first and foremost, an urgent investigation into ceasefire violations and a significant increase in OSCE monitoring possibilities”, Sarksyan outlined. “It needs to be adhered to”.
A Karabakh army officer told the photographer that “occasional shooting has been a normal thing on the frontline for years”. With support from Armenia they fought a war in the early 1990s to establish de facto control over the territory. “If you do, take the side of the oppressed, not the oppressor”, said Erdogan.
Baku and Yerevan have accused each other of provoking hostilities and conflicts.
Suleymanov dubbed this “one of the most positive days” in US-Azerbaijan relations and thanked Secretary of State John Kerry for backing Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity.
“This time with the summit just finished and President Aliyev still in transit back home – he hadn’t even landed – when the escalation began”. Officials in the breakaway region said 29 of their soldiers had been killed since the fighting started, and another 101 wounded.
The region has seen an increase in violence in recent weeks, with a number of deaths on both sides.
Russian Federation has supplied vast quantities of highly sophisticated weaponry to both Azerbaijan and Armenia as a means to expand its influence over a region that was once key to its imperial ambitions.
Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu on Tuesday condemned what he said were Armenian attacks, and said Turkey would stand by Azerbaijan.
“Baku knows that one of its few tools of pressure on the Armenians is to violate the cease-fire and remind them that the status quo can be shaken”, Thomas de Waal, an expert on the region with the Carnegie Endowment, wrote in a commentary.
Security alliance North Atlantic Treaty Organisation called on all sides to “show restraint and prevent any new escalation”. Though Moscow has the strongest hand to play to pressure both sides into occasionally abiding by the ceasefire agreements, the absence of any global mechanisms to enforce a lasting settlement over a highly militarized Karabakh will leave the impoverished region in limbo as another of the half dozen post-Soviet frozen conflict zones.
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Nagorno-Karabakh is a mountainous enclave within Azerbaijan’s borders, populated mainly by ethnic Armenians who reject Azerbaijan’s rule.
