Word: azerbaijan
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...from a mountaintop stronghold held by the Azeris at Shusha, just four miles away. The city has been without running water, electricity or telephones for three months; other regions of Karabakh have been without these basic services for much longer. A near total absence of fuel -- a product of Azerbaijan's economic blockade of the enclave -- has left Karabakh's factories silent, its workers unemployed and without pay. Schools that have not been leveled are closed. The basement of the partially destroyed parliament building serves as the city's maternity ward, where nurses tend newborn babies by candlelight. A member...
...after Soviet power had been established in both Armenia and Azerbaijan, the Bolsheviks granted the disputed region of Karabakh to the Azeris. Before Mikhail Gorbachev came to power, Armenian protests over Karabakh were sporadic and quickly suppressed. But in 1988 the Armenian movement to free Karabakh from Azeri rule went public, and the fighting began...
Until the Soviet Union's collapse, the Kremlin tended to favor the Azeris in the conflict, largely because Azerbaijan was the last bastion of communist orthodoxy in the Caucasus. Soviet army and Interior Ministry troops alternately tried to keep the peace or assisted the Azeris in military operations. Though the Azeri government in Baku accuses Russia of helping Armenia, it is the Azeri fighters in the region who are far better equipped with Soviet military weaponry than their opponents...
...treated the Karabakh conflict as an internal affair of the Soviet Union. But as the fighting increased this year and former Soviet troops pulled out of the enclave, the United Nations, the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (C.S.C.E.), and Iran, which shares borders with both Armenia and Azerbaijan and is trying to expand its role in the region, all launched efforts to resolve the conflict. The first cease-fire brokered by Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Velayati collapsed within a few hours. The second one lasted for several days, with both sides reporting relatively minor violations. That...
Despite the renewed fighting, international mediation efforts continued. Last week, in negotiations organized by Iran and Russia, Armenia and Azerbaijan agreed to stop their cross-border fighting. Karabakh was not discussed, but at a recent C.S.C.E. meeting in Helsinki, tentative plans were made for high-level talks on the future of the enclave. The two sides, however, remain far apart. Armenia insists it is a third party to a conflict between Karabakh and Azerbaijan and demands that the elected leaders of the enclave's self-declared government participate in all negotiations. Azerbaijan does not recognize Karabakh's leaders...