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WASHINGTON: Armenia and Azerbaijan have again agreed to abide by a “humanitarian ceasefire” in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict effective Monday (October 26), the US State Department announced, after previous attempts to stop the bloodshed in the disputed region.
World leaders have been fighting for weeks to negotiate a truce, and Russian President Vladimir Putin estimated that nearly 5,000 people have so far died in weeks of fighting over the mountainous province.
Both an initial ceasefire negotiated by France and a second negotiated by Russia have already been broken.
The latest truce would take effect at 8 am local time on Monday, according to a joint statement from the US State Department and the so-called “Minsk” group that is trying to bring a negotiated end to the conflict.
Azerbaijan on Sunday welcomed the agreement in a statement by its ambassador to the United States, Elin Suleymanov, while pointing an accusing finger at Armenia.
“We urge Armenia to observe the ceasefire and stop its military provocations as agreed. Azerbaijan is firmly committed to achieving peace and the high number of Azerbaijani civilian deaths in recent weeks shows who the aggressor is,” Suleymanov said.
Azerbaijan and Armenia have been embroiled in a bitter conflict over Karabakh since Yerevan-backed Armenian separatists seized control of the mountainous province in a 1990s war that left 30,000 dead.
Karabakh’s self-declared independence has not been recognized internationally, not even by Armenia, and it remains a part of Azerbaijan under international law.
The current conflict broke out on September 27. Armenia and Azerbaijan accuse each other of having attacked the civilian population and having broken previous truces.
The latest ceasefire push came after US Under Secretary of State Stephen Biegun met in Washington on Saturday with Armenian Foreign Minister Zohrab Mnatsakanyan and Azerbaijani Foreign Minister, Jeyhun Bayramov, and the co-chairs of the Minsk Group, consisting of the United States, France and Russia.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo tweeted that the negotiations had been “intense.”
‘AN EASY’
Pompeo had met separately in Washington on Friday with Mnatsakanyan and Bayramov, urging them to “end the violence and protect civilians.”
Negotiations continued behind the scenes on Saturday in the US capital, with Biegun meetings and calls by US national security adviser Robert O’Brien to Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pachinian and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev.
“Congratulations to all of them for agreeing to adhere to the ceasefire today. Lives will be saved in both nations,” O’Brien tweeted Sunday.
Since September 27, Azerbaijani forces have conquered territories outside of Baku’s control since the 1990s.
Beyond a humanitarian ceasefire, the international community has so far been unable to negotiate a lasting truce and even more so a peaceful outcome to the conflict. Furthermore, Armenia ruled out any “diplomatic solution” on Wednesday.
The State Department said that the Minsk co-chairs and foreign ministers “agreed to meet again in Geneva on October 29” to seek “all necessary steps to achieve a peaceful solution to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.”
US President Donald Trump, frantically campaigning for re-election while lagging behind Democrat Joe Biden in the polls, has vowed to resolve the conflict.
“They are incredible people. They are fighting like hell,” he said of the Armenians during a campaign rally in New Hampshire on Sunday, nine days before the Nov. 3 election.
“And you know what? We’re going to do something,” he told the crowd.
A group of Armenians had attended his rally in Ohio the day before, he continued.
“The problems they have, the death and the fighting and everything else, we will fix. That is going to be, I call that easy,” he said, touting his diplomatic credentials without offering details.
The United States has said it is neutral, but in a recent interview Pompeo described Armenia’s actions as defensive.
