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After weeks of military conflict, three failed truces and new negotiations, Armenia and Azerbaijan agreed on measures to ease the situation in the troubled Caucasus region of Nagorno-Karabakh.
More than statements of intent emerged from the six-hour talks mediated by Russia, France and the United States in Geneva.
According to a joint communication from the foreign ministers, the states do not want to deliberately target the civilian population or civilian objects and exchange lists of prisoners of war within a week. The objective may be a prisoner exchange.
The bodies of the dead soldiers will also be recovered and exchanged. For example, the International Red Cross should receive security guarantees. The states exchange on the mechanisms that aim to ensure compliance with a ceasefire.
Even before the negotiations in Geneva, Azerbaijan had handed over more than 30 dead soldiers and officers to Armenia. Azerbaijani presidential adviser Hikmet Hajiyev announced on Thursday. The Armenian Defense Ministry in the capital Yerevan confirmed the reception of the dead and indicated that it was ready to hand over the soldiers who died to Azerbaijan.
Azerbaijan reports territorial gains
Intense fighting has continued since the end of September. The Nagorno-Karabakh authorities said more than 1,000 soldiers were killed. With reference to martial law, Azerbaijan did not provide any information on losses in its own army.
Azerbaijan reported new territorial gains in Nagorno-Karabakh overnight. President Ilham Aliyev spoke on Twitter on Friday about nine villages in the south of the conflict region that his army had captured and that had previously been under Armenian control. Nagorno-Karabakh is a fertile land. “Much remains to be done to restore the region,” Aliyev said.
The most serious attacks since the beginning of the conflict
According to Armenian sources, the cities of Shuschi and Martakert were recently massively attacked. Azerbaijan is committing “crimes against humanity”, the Armenian Foreign Ministry recently announced. Regional President Arayik Harutyunyan addressed the population on Thursday night in a video distributed via Facebook. The “enemy” is only a few kilometers from Shusha, “at most five kilometers,” he said. Azerbaijan’s goal is apparently to “take” the city.
Azerbaijan and Armenia have been claiming Nagorno-Karabakh for decades: Azerbaijan lost control of the area with around 145,000 inhabitants in a war after the collapse of the Soviet Union some 30 years ago. Since 1994 there has been a fragile ceasefire.
The region is controlled by Armenia, but under international law it belongs to Islamic Azerbaijan, which can rely on its “sister state” Turkey in the conflict. Russia is the protecting power of Armenia. Observers fear that the current conflict could turn into an indirect war between Russia and Turkey in the Caucasus.
According to official figures from both parties to the conflict, more than 1,200 people, including more than 130 civilians, have died since the fighting began in September. In fact, the number of deaths is likely to be significantly higher. Russian President Vladimir Putin had spoken of nearly 5,000 killed in the fighting last week.
