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Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan announced their willingness to negotiate directly with the aim of resolving the conflict in the Karabakh region, in light of the intensification of battles and control of more villages by Azerbaijan.
In two parallel meetings with the Russian agency “TASS”, Aliyev said that Azerbaijan is ready to negotiate with Armenia to resolve the dispute over Karabakh in Moscow or any other capital.
For his part, Pashinyan stressed that the dispute with Azerbaijan over Karabakh can only be resolved by peaceful means, expressing his willingness to hold a direct meeting with the Azerbaijani president in the Russian capital, Moscow.
In this context, the Politico news site revealed that US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo will hold separate meetings with the foreign ministers of Azerbaijan and Armenia next Friday in Washington, DC.
The website said that the Azerbaijani foreign minister will meet his US counterpart on Friday morning, shortly before Pompeo’s meeting with the Armenian foreign minister at the ministry headquarters.
The site added that it is not yet clear whether the US side will try to hold a tripartite meeting, but indicated that the visit of the Azerbaijani and Armenian ministers on the same day indicates that the United States is intensifying its efforts to defuse the conflict between the two countries over the Nagorno Karabakh region since late September / Last September, which killed hundreds of fighters and civilians.
Turkish movement
Meanwhile, the speaker of the Turkish parliament, Mustafa Shantop, met with Azerbaijani Prime Minister Ali Asadov in the capital Baku on Monday.
During the meeting that took place at the prime minister’s headquarters, Shantube said that Turkey supported Azerbaijan’s just struggle to liberate its lands from Armenian occupation from the beginning.
Shantub assured Asadov that Azerbaijan is a friend and brother country of Turkey, noting that Armenia is an occupied and historically aggressive country from the perspective of international law.
For his part, the Prime Minister of Azerbaijan said that his country successfully continues its operations to liberate its lands from Armenian occupation.
He added that the Azeri army has liberated two cities, one town and 71 villages from occupation since last September 27 until now.
In the countryside
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev announced the control of his country’s forces in 13 villages belonging to the city of Gabriel, south of the disputed Karabakh region with Armenia, and the two sides exchanged accusations of violating the humanitarian truce that came into force on Saturday and to intensify the bombing in the region.
The Al-Jazeera correspondent in Karabakh said fighting resumed in the region a day after the declaration of the humanitarian armistice between Armenia and Azerbaijan, which was mediated by Russia to stop the worst fighting in the South Caucasus region since the decade. of the nineties of the last century.
The renewed conflict between Baku and Yerevan since September 27 has claimed the lives of more than 1,000 people, most of them military personnel.
Mahmoud Al-Zeebak, a correspondent for Al-Jazeera in the city of Goris near Karabakh, indicated that the Armenian Defense Ministry denied allegations by the Azerbaijani authorities of bombing Azeri pipelines, adding that fierce battles are being fought in the southern front of the region. The correspondent said that shortly after the truce, which took effect a day and a half ago, came into force, violations were reported when several areas of the region were bombed.
Mutual accusations
Hikmat Hajiyev, aide to the Azerbaijani president, said Armenia violated the humanitarian truce and bombed several Azerbaijani cities, and the Defense Ministry accused Armenia of seeking to increase tension on the battle fronts and said it repelled several Armenian attacks on Azerbaijani cities. .
The Azerbaijani army stated in a statement that Armenia fired on its positions outside the fighting areas in Karabakh.
On the other hand, the Armenian Defense Ministry last night accused Azerbaijan of violating the armistice, but affirmed its commitment to the truce, under the pretext of guaranteeing a permanent ceasefire. The Foreign Ministry renewed its accusations that Azerbaijan deliberately targeted cities and civil infrastructure in the Nagorno Karabakh region and Armenian cities.
On the other hand, the Defense Ministry of the unrecognized “Nagorno Karabakh Republic” said that Azerbaijan fired artillery at night at various sectors of the front and continued its attacks this morning.
Lavrov’s statements
In a related context, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov stressed that the most important step that needs to be taken to resolve the conflict in Karabakh is the immediate cessation of escalation language between the two warring parties, and by those he described as external actors.
Lavrov said that his country is currently working with Armenia and Azerbaijan to develop a mechanism to implement the ceasefire agreement, and expressed his hope that this mechanism will be announced as soon as possible.
For his part, Vice Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov stressed that his country is in constant contact with Turkey, in relation to the participation of those he described as mercenaries from Syria and Libya in the battles of Karabakh.
Involve mercenaries
Bogdanov said, in press releases, that his country has repeatedly confirmed to Ankara that it will not accept the participation of mercenaries in the conflict, and the “Sputnik” agency quoted an informed Russian source as saying that more than 1,000 militants from Syria were sent to Karabakh last week and that a new group of fighters would be dispatched. soon.
And Russian intelligence chief Sergey Naryshkin had expressed concern about the transformation of the southern Caucasus into a stronghold of what he described as terrorists, in light of the ongoing conflict in the region between Baku and Yerevan.
It should be noted that Karabakh is part of Azerbaijan under international law, but the majority of the region’s population are Armenians, and it separated from Baku shortly before the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. This led to the outbreak of a war that it left 30,000 dead and in 1994 a ceasefire was declared. The fire, but the fighting did not cease completely.
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