Armenia, Azerbaijan ministers agree to meet as tensions increase

The foreign ministers of Armenia and Azerbaijan will meet today to continue talks on Nagorno-Karabakh after escalating border skirmishes left a soldier dead.

“There is no alternative to the negotiations with Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh, so we have to meet even if people die as a result of their attacks,” Armenian Foreign Minister Eduard Nalbandian told reporters in Yerevan yesterday.

Armenians captured Nagorno-Karabakh, a mountainous enclave about the size of Rhode Island, and seven adjacent districts from Azerbaijan in a war after the Soviet Union’s collapse in 1991. More than 30,000 people were killed and over a million, mostly Azeris, were displaced before Russia brokered a cease-fire in 1994. 

The two nations’ presidents in November met in Vienna for the first time in two years.

Azerbaijan repelled an Armenian offensive southeast of the region, the country’s Defense Ministry said yesterday on its website. Two days earlier, an Armenian soldier was killed in what the Nagorno-Karabakh's separatist regime described as a sabotage attack.

Azerbaijan, which last month signed $45 billion contracts with a BP Plc-led group to pipe natural gas to Europe, has repeatedly threatened to use force to regain control of the territory should peace efforts fail. 

(Bloomberg)

ANN.Az