Armenia and Azerbaijan said on Thursday that they have reached an agreement on taking confidence-building steps by releasing prisoners of war following their first-ever direct negotiations with no mediators involved
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has welcomed the agreement between Armenia and Azerbaijan to improve their relations, said his spokesman.
“The Secretary-General welcomes the joint statement issued by Armenia and Azerbaijan announcing a series of confidence-building measures and reaffirming their commitment to normalise bilateral relations,” said Stephane Dujarric, the UN spokesman, on Friday.
The United Nations encourages the parties to build on the agreement to advance mutual confidence and secure long-term peace for the benefit of their population and the region, Dujarric told a daily press briefing.
Armenia and Azerbaijan said on Thursday that they have reached an agreement on taking confidence-building steps by releasing prisoners of war following their first-ever direct negotiations with no mediators involved, Xinhua news agency reported.
The two countries said they intend to normalise relations and reach a peace treaty.
Armenia and Azerbaijan have been at loggerheads over the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh, internationally recognised as part of Azerbaijan, since 1988. Peace talks have been going on since 1994 when a ceasefire was agreed on, despite sporadic clashes since then.
Late last month’s blitz against the Armenian Christians is the latest chapter in a bitter, decades-long conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan….reports Asian Lite News
The latest blitz by Azerbaijan in Nagorno-Karabakh and the subsequent refugee exodus to Armenia should be termed and condemned, as ethnic cleansing of the disputed conclave and so-called Islamic countries should take the lead for this initiative.
Late last month’s blitz against the Armenian Christians is the latest chapter in a bitter, decades-long conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan.
War between the two neighbours started during the collapse of the Soviet Union, of which both countries had been a part.
Armenia won control over Nagorno-Karabakh and a wide surrounding region by end-1994. This also resulted in displacement of more than a million people, including hundreds of thousands of Azerbaijanis living in the disputed area.
In 2020, after a 44-day war Azerbaijan retook much of that territory, but the heart of Nagorno-Karabakh remains a de facto independent conclave. Moscow brokered a deal between the warring nations and Russian soldiers were deployed along the borders to protect the status quo.
At present, the Lachin corridor is the only available route for most of the refugees fleeing Karabakh, Armenia’s decision not to defend them and instead recognise the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan –accepting Karabakh’s integration — was a bitter pill for most of the fleeing.
In fact, the conclave of Nagorno-Karabakh is recognised internationally as part of Azerbaijan but large areas of it have been controlled by ethnic Armenians for three decades, and it remains at the heart of one of the world’s longest-running conflicts.
Azerbaijan officials have said there would be no retribution against Karabakh residents who served in the military, except for those who had committed war crimes in previous conflicts.
Further, Baku has promised to offer equal rights to all those who stay.
Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev said last week that the Armenian population in Karabakh could now breathe easy, they are our citizens.
Echoing international concern, the US last week urged Azerbaijan to preserve civilian rights and allow humanitarian and monitoring missions, as hundreds of Armenians left their homes in Nagorno-Karabakh, citing fears of ethnic cleansing.
Reportedly on the first day of the exodus, at least 13,550 of the 120,000 ethnic Armenians who called Nagorno-Karabakh home arrived in Armenia.
US Agency for International Development (USAID) chief Samantha Power urged Azerbaijan to maintain the ceasefire and take concrete steps to protect the rights of civilians in Nagorno-Karabakh.
Power, who earlier gave Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan a letter of solidarity from President Joe Biden, said Azerbaijan’s use of force was wrong and that the US was considering a reaction.
She urged Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev to keep his pledge to defend ethnic Armenian rights by reopening the Lachin corridor, which connects the area to Armenia, and allowing relief supplies and an international monitoring team to enter the country.
However, so far there has been no international condemnation of the Azerbaijani action, as Armenia complains of the Russian neglect to honour its pledge to safeguard Armenians due to involvement and focus of its forces on the Ukrainian conflict.
Historically, in the 1920s modern-day Armenia and Azerbaijan became part of the Soviet Union. The area designated Nagorno-Karabakh had a majority ethnic-Armenian population but was controlled by Azerbaijan. When the Soviet Union began to collapse in the late 1980s, Nagorno-Karabakh’s regional parliament voted to become part of Armenia. As a result Azerbaijan sought to suppress the separatist movement, while Armenia backed it.
This move led to ethnic clashes and a full-scale war after both the countries declared independence from Russia. The biggest military confrontation since the early 1990s started in 2020 resulting in six weeks of heavy fighting.
Azerbaijan won back territory and by the time both sides agreed to sign a Russian-brokered peace deal in November 2020, it had recaptured all the territories surrounding Nagorno-Karabakh held by Armenia since 1994.
Under the agreement, Armenian forces had to withdraw from these areas and have since been confined to a smaller part of the region.
In fact, the latest move by Azerbaijan changes the balance of power in the South Caucasus region, a mixture of ethnicities. The region is also crisscrossed with oil and gas pipelines where Russia, the US, Turkey and Iran are jostling for influence.
Since the breakup of the Soviet Union, Armenia had relied on a security partnership with Russia, while Azerbaijan grew close to Turkey, with which it shares linguistic and cultural ties.
Armenia has sought closer ties with the West, in view of Moscow’s neglect, which Moscow denies and has told President Pashinyan that he is making a big mistake by flirting with the United States. Aliyev hinted recently at the prospect of creating a land corridor to Turkey across Armenia.
Regional powers have been heavily involved in the conflict over the years. Turkey has close cultural and historical links to Azerbaijan. Turkish-made Bayraktar drones are said to have played a crucial role in the fighting in 2020, allowing Azerbaijan to make territorial gains.
According to latest UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) reports, over 88,000 refugees from the Karabakh region have fled to Armenia in less than a week and humanitarian needs are surging.
Last week, UNHCR chief Filippo Grandi tweeted that more than 100,000 refugees had now arrived in Armenia from Karabakh.
In fact, this was a tragedy that could have been avoided.
The New York Times recently wrote about what’s now happening in Nagorno-Karabakh and why “almost no one saw it coming”.
Nothing could be more wrong. Armenians, as well as those who have followed the conflict, have warned for a long time that this was coming.
Svante Lundgren, Researcher at Lund University, Sweden in his analysis for conversation.com stated that as a result of the Azerbaijani attack on the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh on September 19 and the forced exodus that followed it, this region would soon be empty of Armenians — for the first time in more than two millennia.
And this has happened due to no global condemnation or action against Azeri military actions, which can’t be stopped just by words but by action on the ground.
After war with Azerbaijan, Armenia taps India for military hardware.(photo:IN)
Antonio Guterres calls “for an immediate end to the fighting” after the EU, France and Germany condemned Azerbaijan’s military action…reports Asian Lite News
Azerbaijan said on Wednesday its military operation in Armenian-controlled Nagorno-Karabakh continued successfully after the US called on it to halt hostilities and Moscow urged both sides to stop the bloodshed in the disputed region.
After months of rising tensions in the Armenian-controlled Nagorno-Karabakh in the South Caucasus, Azerbaijan this week sent troops backed by artillery strikes into the region in an attempt to bring the breakaway region to heel.
The military measures “continue successfully,” with weaponry and military equipment destroyed, Azerbaijan’s defense ministry said in a statement on the Telegram messaging platform.
The mountainous Karabakh is internationally recognized as Azerbaijani territory, but part of it is run by separatist Armenian authorities who say it is their ancestral homeland.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken held calls with both Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Armenia’s Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, urging Azerbaijan to “immediately cease military actions” and de-escalate the situation.
In a readout of the call, the US Department of State said that Aliyev “expressed readiness” to stop hostilities and hold a meeting with representatives of Nagorno-Karabakh. Blinken told Pashinyan in their call that Armenia has Washington’s full support.
Russian news agencies cited Azeri’s presidential administration as saying Aliyev told Blinken that Azerbaijan will stop its operation only after Armenian fighters lay down their weapons and surrender.
Antonio Guterres, Secretary-General of the United Nations, called “for an immediate end to the fighting” after the European Union, France and Germany condemned Azerbaijan’s military action.
Armenia took control of large swathes of territory in a war that unfolded as the Soviet Union collapsed. Azerbaijan took most of it back in a six-week conflict in 2020, ended by a Russian-brokered truce.
It was not clear whether Azerbaijan’s actions would trigger a full-scale conflict dragging in Armenia, but the fighting in Karabakh could alter the geopolitical balance in the South Caucasus.
Russia — distracted by its own war in Ukraine — is seeking to preserve its influence in the region, crisscrossed with oil and gas pipelines, in the face of greater activity from Turkiye, which backs Azerbaijan.
Karabakh separatist authorities said 27 people had been killed, including two civilians, and more than 200 injured due to the military action on Tuesday. Residents of some villages had been evacuated, they said.
Moscow called early on Wednesday on both sides to stop the bloodshed and hostilities and return to the implementation of the 2020 cease-fire agreement.
“We urge the conflicting parties to immediately stop the bloodshed, stop hostilities and eliminate civilian casualties,” Russia’s foreign ministry said in a statement posted on its Telegram messaging platform.
Relations between Russia and Armenia — traditional allies — have frayed badly since President Vladimir Putin launched the invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and further deteriorated in recent months over what Armenia says is Moscow’s failure to fully uphold the 2020 cease-fire deal.
Armenia, which had been holding periodic peace talks with Azerbaijan, including questions about Karabakh’s future, condemned Baku’s “full-scale aggression” against the people of Karabakh and accused Azerbaijan of shelling towns and villages.
Azerbaijan said its intention was to “disarm and secure the withdrawal of formations of Armenia’s armed forces from our territories, (and) neutralize their military infrastructure.”
Meanwhile, Russia has called for an immediate halt to “bloodshed” in the ongoing conflict in the Nagorno-Karabakh region and has urged Azerbaijan and Armenia to return to compliance with the trilateral agreement with Moscow, TASS News Agency reported.
Moscow has further urged the sides to stop armed hostilities and do everything possible to protect the population
“The most important thing now is to immediately return to compliance with the trilateral agreements signed at the top level in 2020-2022, which lay out all measures for a peaceful solution to the Nagorno-Karabakh issue,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
It also urged “to stop armed hostilities and to do everything possible in order to protect the population of Nagorno-Karabakh and defend its interests,” TASS reported.
It further demanded the sides to stop the ‘bloodshed’, adding that the Russian peacekeeping force is assisting the civilian population in the conflicted region.
“Due to a rapid escalation of armed hostilities in Nagorno-Karabakh, we strongly call upon the conflicting sides to immediately stop bloodshed, cease hostilities and prevent casualties among the civilian population,” TASS quoted the Russian Foreign Ministry.
It added, “Currently, the Russian peacekeeping force is assisting the civilian population [of Nagorno-Karabakh], including providing medical aid to them, and is dealing with matters of evacuation”.
Meanwhile, at least 27 people have been killed and 200 wounded in a military operation by Azerbaijan in the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region, CNN reported citing an official in Armenian-controlled territory there.
