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Armenia says Baku-Yerevan peace accord on Karabakh not holding

Tuesday, 22 December 2015 3:34 PM [ Last Update: Tuesday, 22 December 2015 3:35 PM ]

Azerbaijan's President Ilham Aliyev (R) meets with his Armenian counterpart, Serzh Sargsyan, to discuss the decades-old conflict over the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh, in Bern, Switzerland, December 19, 2015. ©AFP

Armenia says the 1994 ceasefire agreement with Azerbaijan over the issue of Nagorno-Karabakh practically no longer exists, describing the current situation in the disputed region as a state of “war.”

“What we have today is a war,” Armenia’s Defense Ministry spokesman Artsrun Hovhannisyan told journalists in Yerevan on Tuesday, adding, “We must use the word 'war' as there is no ceasefire anymore.”

Hovhannisyan accused the Azerbaijan government of military provocations across the Nagorno-Karabakh territory’s frontline and along the shared border of the former Soviet neighbor.

“Azerbaijan is using all existing armaments: tanks, howitzers, and anti-aircraft artillery,” the Armenian official said.

In response, Azerbaijan made counter-accusations and blamed Armenia for a recent wave of clashes between the two sides over the disputed region.

“Ceasefire violations are taking place because of the illegal presence of Armenian forces in the occupied lands of Azerbaijan,” said Azerbaijan's Foreign Ministry spokesman Hikmat Hajiyev.

The war of words came less than a week after Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan and his Azeri counterpart, Ilham Aliyev, met in Bern, Switzerland, and discussed their decades-old conflict. The meeting, however, appeared to have brought no tangible results.

It came amid fresh skirmishes over Nagorno-Karabakh, with the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) warning that "the status quo has become unsustainable."

The two ex-Soviet Caucasus countries of Armenia and Azerbaijan claim the territory. Ethnic Armenian forces took control of the enclave, which accounts for 16 percent of the Azerbaijan territory, in the early 1990s during a war which lasted from February 1988 to May 1994.

The conflict left an estimated 30,000 people dead and one million displaced before the two sides agreed to a ceasefire in 1994.

The dispute still remains unsettled as clashes continue to erupt regularly along the border shared by the two countries.

Azerbaijan has threatened to take back the region by force if negotiations between the two sides fail to yield results. Armenia says it would not stand by if Nagorno-Karabakh were attacked.

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