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Moscow (AFP)
Moscow announced that Azerbaijan and Armenia agreed to a ceasefire in the Nagorno Karabakh region on Saturday, starting at noon the same day, following lengthy negotiations that took place in Moscow between the foreign ministers of the two countries.
Reciting a statement after the negotiations, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that a ceasefire would begin “from 12:00 pm (09:00 GMT) on October 10, 2020 for humanitarian purposes.”
Lavrov clarified that the ceasefire would allow “the exchange of prisoners of war and other people and corpses through the Red Cross Committee, according to its criteria.”
The Russian minister added that Armenia and Azerbaijan also agreed to initiate “substantive negotiations to quickly reach a peaceful solution” to the Nagorno Karabakh conflict, mediated by the heads of the Minsk group of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.
The Minsk Group, which has been chaired by Russia, the United States and France since the mid-1990s, is the main international mediator in this dispute.
Lavrov said that “the specific parameters” of the ceasefire agreement would be agreed later.
Negotiations between the Armenian and Azerbaijani foreign ministers lasted more than ten hours and ended on Friday night and Saturday.
These negotiations were the first serious hope of ending the violent clashes that have taken place since September 27 between Armenian separatists in the unilaterally proclaimed Nagorno Karabakh Republic, backed by the forces of Yerevan and Azerbaijan.
Neither party had previously responded to calls from the international community to stop the fighting.
– ‘Teacher’ –
In a post on her Facebook page, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova spoke of “lengthy negotiations” and described the Russian Foreign Minister as a “teacher” or “teacher.”
Before the talks began, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev confirmed that he wanted to give Yerevan one “last chance” to peacefully resolve the conflict in this mountainous region that the two countries claim. “We will return in all cases to our lands,” he said in a televised speech.
As for the Armenian Prime Minister, Nikole Pashinyan, he affirmed his willingness to “resume the peace process.”
Meanwhile, Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin met with his Armenian counterpart in Yerevan on Friday.
During the negotiations, a spokesman for the Armenian army confirmed to the media that fighting was continuing on the front line.
An AFP journalist said new missiles and explosions were heard in Stepanakert, the capital of the breakaway Karabakh region.
In his televised speech, the President of Azerbaijan announced the restoration of the city of Hadrut in southern Nagorno Karabakh and eight neighboring villages. A spokesman for the separatist presidency called this information “delirium”.
The official death toll rose to more than 400 on Friday morning, including 22 Armenian civilians and 31 Azerbaijanis. But the death toll may be much higher, as each side announces that it has killed thousands of enemy soldiers, while Baku has not disclosed its military losses.
The clashes extended in recent days to the bombing of populated cities, with each side accusing the other of attacking civilians.
Azerbaijan underlines its determination to restore Nagorno-Karabakh, the region of which Armenians make up the majority, by force of arms, noting that only the withdrawal of enemy forces will end the fighting.
The first war in the region between 1988 and 1994 resulted in the death of thirty thousand people and hundreds of thousands of refugees there.
The front has remained frozen since then despite some repeated clashes.
© 2020 AFP
