France struggles for Karabakh peace breakthrough amid fierce fighting
A French try to relaunch peace talks over Nagorno-Karabakh showed no sign of a breakthrough on Saturday as Azerbaijan blamed Armenia for re-igniting their decades-old conflict.Nagorno-Karabakh, an ethnic Armenian enclave inside Azerbaijan, said Azeri forces had again launched rockets towards its main city, Stepanakert, a week following the opposing sides commenced pounding each other with tanks and missiles.
The clashes will be the worst because the 1990s, raising the chance of a wider regional war that could draw in Russia and Turkey amid deepening concern about stability in the South Caucasus, where pipelines carry Azeri coal and oil to world markets. "
Fierce battles continue along the complete front," the Azeri defence ministry said on the seventh day of fighting with ethnic Armenian forces. French President Emmanuel Macron spoke on Friday with President Ilham Aliyev of Azerbaijan and Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan of Armenia - which backs Nagorno-Karabakh - and said later in a statement he had proposed a fresh way to restart talks. "
The president of Azerbaijan located the whole responsibility on the leadership of Armenia for the break-off of negotiations and the armed confrontation," Aliyev's press service said. Armenia says it was Azerbaijan that reopened the conflict by launching a major offensive on Sept. 27.
Armenia had said on Friday it was willing to build relationships Russia, america and France - co-chairs of the so-called Minsk Band of the OSCE security organisation - on renewing a ceasefire in Nagorno-Karabakh.But Aliyev told Al Jazeera within an interview on Friday that the Minsk group had failed for days gone by three decades to make progress over the dispute.
He said Azerbaijan was not ignoring ceasefire calls, but this may only be performed if ethnic Armenian forces withdrew from Azeri territories - a mention of Nagorno-Karabakh and seven surrounding regions they have manipulated since the 1990s. "(The) conditions should be that they withdraw from the territories. We are in need of our territories back by tranquil means and we demonstrated for 28 years our willingness to get a relaxing settlement," Aliyev said.
Some 200 people have already been reported killed during the past week and the toll may be considerably higher, as Azerbaijan has not disclosed its military losses.Violence first broke out over Nagorno-Karabakh in 1988, when both Armenia and Azerbaijan were still section of the Soviet Union, and some 30,000 people were killed before a 1994 ceasefire.
The International Committee of the Red Cross voiced alarm at civilian deaths and injuries, including of children. "People have experienced touch with the ICRC, terrified for themselves and their own families and at a loss as to where to go or what to do to remain safe," it said. It added it had been concerned about the risk of a surge in COVID-19 cases from people hiding all night in shelters or crowding together with poor sanitation.
