Word: karabakh
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
After three years of bureaucratic successes, few expect Gorbachev to lose ground in the upcoming party conference. "He is the consummate politician," said one Western diplomat in Moscow. But the Soviet leader could be brought low by circumstances beyond his control. Last week renewed unrest flared in Nagorno-Karabakh, the Armenian enclave in the Soviet republic of Azerbaijan; the Communist Party at week's end dismissed the party leaders of the republics of Armenia and Azerbaijan. The continued turmoil suggests that Gorbachev's decision to allow dissent among ethnic minorities could still return to haunt him. So could the withdrawal...
...Azerbaijan that resulted in confrontations claiming at least 34 lives. At the same time, Gorbachev said, any solution must be based on "internationalist" principles. Most Soviet analysts took that remark as a coded warning to Armenians to set aside their nationalist aspirations, specifically, the goal of annexing the Nagorno-Karabakh district of Azerbaijan, which is populated mainly by Armenians and was the scene of most of the unrest. Whether that stipulation is agreeable to Armenia is questionable, but no further disturbances were reported in the region...
...nine days, hundreds of thousands of demonstrators jammed the square in front of Yerevan's opera house, chanting "Karabakh," singing patriotic songs and holding banners bearing such inscriptions as SELF-DETERMINATION IS NOT EXTREMISM. Police did not interfere with the protests, and Soviet army troops maintained a low profile, but the implicit threat of a crackdown mounted with each passing...
...secretly in the Kremlin with two well-known Armenian writers, Zori Balayan and Silva Kaputikyan. Gorbachev promised them that he would personally study the Armenian demands. As soon as that message was relayed to Yerevan, the protest leaders agreed to suspend the demonstrations for one month. In Nagorno-Karabakh, however, at least two Azerbaijani youths were killed in clashes with Armenians...
...those casualties that sparked last week's rioting in Sumgait (pop. 223,000), situated about 20 miles north of the Azerbaijani capital of Baku. According to a local television worker reached by telephone, the trouble started when a group of some 50 Azerbaijanis arrived in Sumgait from Nagorno-Karabakh bearing word of ethnic fighting there. The apparent result was a murderous backlash aimed at local Armenians. An Armenian resident of Sumgait, sobbing into the telephone, told Reuters that Azerbaijanis had gone on a rampage of rape and murder against Armenians. He said that seven members of a single family...