[ad_1]
Rocket howitzer near the cemetery of the city of Hoyali in the isolated area of Nagorno – Karabakh (photo REUTERS).
For the first time in many years, a conflict in the former Soviet republics brought the United States, Russia and France together, albeit temporarily. In a joint statement, the presidents of the three countries called on Armenia and Azerbaijan to immediately cease hostilities that have been raging since last Sunday in the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh enclave in the southern Caucasus, and to return to both. .
“We call on the leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan to commit without delay to the resumption of substantive negotiations in good faith and without preconditions,” a joint statement issued by Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin and Emanuel Macron was published yesterday. The three main powers are the Minsk Group, which has been working since 1992 on behalf of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe to peacefully mediate the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.
A few minutes earlier, Tayyip Erdogan had launched a preemptive strike against any mediation initiative. Speaking to Turkey’s National Assembly, he said: “Since the United States, Russia and France have ignored the problem for almost 30 years, it is unacceptable that they are now engaged in the pursuit of a ceasefire.
The crisis in the South Caucasus was discussed during a telephone conversation between Emanuel Macron and Vladimir Putin.
According to the French presidential office, the two leaders “expressed concern about the dispatch of Syrian mercenaries from Turkey to Nagorno-Karabakh.”
The issue was also discussed at yesterday’s meeting of the Russian National Security Council chaired by Vladimir Putin. According to the Russian news agency TASS, the Kremlin considers “extremely worrying” the sending of fighters of “illegal armed groups” from Syria and Libya to Nagorno-Karabakh. However, Russia has offered to host the Foreign Ministers of Armenia and Azerbaijan for talks aimed at reaching a ceasefire, which, however, does not seem likely to happen in the near future. Instead, Armenia announced last night the withdrawal of its ambassador from Israel, protesting the sale of Israeli weapons worth more than $ 800 million to Azerbaijan in recent years.
Despite diplomatic fever, fighting continued for the fifth day in a row in Nagorno-Karabakh, with more than 100 killed on both sides, and despite some limited Azeri territorial gains, neither side came close to gaining a strategic advantage. A journalist and a photographer for the French newspaper Le Monde were injured in the Armenian city of Martuni by Azerbaijani artillery fire and their condition was described as serious.
The Nagorno-Karabakh crisis was to occupy the European Union Summit, which began yesterday and ends today in Brussels, as announced by the German Presidency. Speaking at the summit, Emanuel Macron said that Paris “has clear information showing that Syrian jihadist fighters were sent through Gaziantep to the theater of operations in Upper Karabakh,” as the French call the disputed region. complaint against Turkey.
