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Armenia Ready To Discuss Ceasefire As Conflict Escalates

By Stefan J. Bos, Special Correspondent Worthy News

(Worthy News) – Armenia says it is ready to discuss a ceasefire in the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh, where heavy fighting between Armenian and Azerbaijani forces in recent days has killed dozens and left scores wounded. The announcement comes amid international calls to end the most significant escalation in years.

Terrified residents were seen as air-raid alarms wailed amid the worst fighting over Nagorno-Karabakh in years. The region lies within Azerbaijan but is controlled by local ethnic Armenian forces backed by Armenia.

Leaders of Russia, France, and the United States have called for an immediate ceasefire. They are co-chairs of the so-called Minsk Group, set up by Europe’s security organization OSCE in 1992 to resolve the conflict.

Besides calling for a truce, they also urged “resuming substantive negotiations … under the auspices of the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs.”

Armenia’s Foreign Ministry said over the weekend it was “ready to engage” with the co-chairs of the group “to reestablish a ceasefire regime based on the 1994-1995 agreements.”

ARMENIAN WARNING

However, Armenia’s President Armen Sarkissian warns his nation will not accept Azerbaijan’s demands that Armenian forces withdraw from Nagorno-Karabakh. “What they are trying to do is to force Armenians out of the land in which they historically lived, even before Azerbaijan as a republic existed,” he stressed. “So, in my vocabulary, it is called ‘ethnic cleansing,’” Sarkissian said.

That was in response to Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev. “We have only one condition,” President Aliyev explained. “The Armenian armed forces must immediately and definitely leave our lands in full force. If the Armenian government complies with this condition, the fighting and bloodshed can stop, and peace will be established in the region.”

Turkey has expressed its full support for Azerbaijan’s position. Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan blames mediators for failing to solve the territorial dispute since a ceasefire in 1994. “The United States, Russia and France have not been able to resolve the conflict for almost 30 years. On the contrary, they are doing everything they can to prolong the problem,” Erdogan said in half an hour speech. “Azerbaijan has already listened to you for 30 years! But whose lands are occupied? Azerbaijan’s!”

That drew an angry response from French President Emmanuel Macron, who is among those ready to mediate. “I took note of the political statements from Turkey, which, I think, are reckless and dangerous. And I say it especially to Armenia, as France – within the Minsk group, with its impartiality that justifies my cautiousness – is extremely preoccupied by the belligerent messages from Turkey in the past hours,” Macron told reporters.

“[These messages] are removing Azerbaijan’s inhibitions in what would be a recapture of the Nagorno-Karabakh. And we will not accept that,” he added.

ARMENIAN GENOCIDE

Turkey’s support for mainly Muslim Azerbaijan has been seen by critics in heavily Christian Armenia as the continuation of the “Turkish genocide” against Armenian people during World War I. “We fight not only with Azerbaijan, with Turkey and thousands of its mercenary soldiers from the Middle East,” insisted Masis Mailyan, foreign minister of the self-proclaimed Republic of Artsakh, the other name for Nogorno-Karabakh.

“This is the continuation of the Turkish genocide against Armenian people. The genocide, that the U.S. Congress officially recognized in a resolution last year, affirming that Turkey exterminated 1.5 million Armenians,” he told The Daily Beast publication.

Turkey has strongly denied it was a genocide saying both Armenians and Turks died as a result of World War I. It also contests the figures, putting the death toll in the hundreds of thousands.

However, with fighting continuing between forces of Armenia and Azerbaijan, there is mounting concern the area will plunge once again into an all-out war. The two neighbors have been locked for decades in a conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh. The 4,400-square-kilometer (1,700-square-mile) enclave in the Caucasus Mountains, is roughly the size of the U.S. state of Delaware, lies 50 kilometers or 30 miles from the Armenian border.

Nagorno-Karabakh has been under the control of ethnic Armenian forces and the Armenian military since the 1994 end of a full-scale separatist war. That conflict killed about 30,000 people and displaced an estimated 1 million.

SOVIET COLLAPSE

The war ended three years after the Soviet Union collapsed. Both Azerbaijan and Armenia were part once of the Soviet Union. The impact of its breakup continues to be felt throughout the region and underscored religious tensions.

Armenia with a population of three million people boosts to be among one of the earliest Christian civilizations. Its first churches were founded in the fourth century. In later centuries, Armenians frequently oscillated between Byzantine, Persian, Mongol or Turkish control, as well as periods of independence.

Oil-rich Azerbaijan on the other hand is a heavily Muslim nation of 10 million people.

Rights activists say despite its wealth and increased influence in the wider region, poverty and corruption continue to overshadow the country’s development.

In addition, a reported government crackdown on human rights advocates and journalists also raised doubts among Western leaders about Azerbaijan’s democratic credentials.