South Caucasus
Armenia accuses Azerbaijan of new war preparations
Armenian soldiers take part in a night exercise. photo
© Hannes P. Albert/dpa
In September, Azerbaijan violently attacked – and conquered – the Nagorno-Karabakh region. Baku has further war plans, says the Armenian head of government.
Armenia in the South Caucasus has, against the background of the conflict over the Nagorno-Karabakh region, the neighboring Azerbaijan accused of new war plans.
“It seems to us that preparations are underway to spark a new war, a new military aggression against Armenia,” said Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan at the opening of the autumn session of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Organization for Security and Cooperation (OSCE) in Yerevan. The Armenian military had previously reported the injury of a soldier by Azerbaijani forces.
Fierce attacks on Nagorno-Karabakh
Authoritarian-run Azerbaijan conquered the Nagorno-Karabakh region, which is disputed between the two countries, at the end of September after fierce attacks. A good 100,000 residents of the predominantly Armenian population have since fled to their motherland. The area broke away from Baku in the 1990s in a bloody civil war with the help of Yerevan.
Pashinyan now complained that Baku was planning further conquests. “It is very suspicious that at the official level in Azerbaijan Armenia is called West Azerbaijan,” he said. The background is likely to be the ongoing dispute over the Azerbaijani exclave Nakhichevan.
Nakhichevan has a population of around 400,000 and borders mainly on Iran and Armenia. The region was added to Azerbaijan at the beginning of the Soviet era – probably also with Turkish interests in mind. Azerbaijan has long been pushing for a new road and rail link to its enclave. Statements from Baku about the creation of a corridor can also be understood in military terms.