Word: azerbaijans
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Moscow's failure to grasp the potency of the ethnic antagonisms in Azerbaijan became shockingly apparent as festering tensions between Armenians and Azerbaijanis erupted into the worst known outbreak of violence in the Soviet Union since World War II. But what began as an ethnic blood feud quickly turned into a popular revolt against Soviet rule...
...Azerbaijani capital of Baku, crowds blockaded the Communist Party headquarters and the republic's television studio, while impassioned speakers called for the secession of Azerbaijan and its reunification with regions of northern Iran in a single Islamic state. Demonstrators aligned with a group identified as the National Front Defense Committee used buses and trucks to barricade streets and keep troops from entering the city. Along the southern frontier with Iran, the scene of nationalist protests earlier this month, thousands of Azerbaijanis illegally crossed to the other side and staged rallies calling for a joint struggle to liberate Nagorno-Karabakh...
Initially Moscow declared a state of emergency in parts of Azerbaijan, banning strike actions, rallies and demonstrations; inexplicably the restrictions did not extend to Baku. Then the Kremlin dispatched 11,000 troops from the army, the navy, the KGB and the Interior Ministry to assist the nearly 6,000 troops already in the region...
...aimed to project the air of a competent crisis manager. He received former Japanese Foreign Minister Shintaro Abe and met with U.N. Secretary-General Javier Perez de Cuellar, who encountered protesters in Moscow holding up signs that read GORBACHEV, HISTORY WILL NOT FORGIVE YOU FOR THE BLOODSHED IN AZERBAIJAN...
...most recent round of fighting began in February 1988, when ethnic hatreds erupted in the port town of Sumgait, north of Baku, resulting in an official death count of 32, most of them Armenians. Over the next two years, more than 220,000 Armenians fled Azerbaijan. Those who remained behind in the disputed enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh have lived under a virtual state of siege, relying on supplies airlifted from Armenia. Last month the Supreme Soviet voted to return administrative control over the region to the Azerbaijanis. Enraged, the Armenian parliament voted two weeks ago to include Nagorno-Karabakh...