Word: nakhichevan
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...anymore. Last week Armenian fighters cut a six-mile corridor through Azerbaijan to link Karabakh to the Armenian republic, then launched an artillery assault on the Azeri territory of Nakhichevan, which borders Iran and Turkey. Washington, Moscow and Tehran all strongly condemned the surprisingly forceful Armenian military moves. And in Ankara the main opposition party called on the Turkish government to send troops to Nakhichevan to defend the Azeris, who are ethnic Turks...
...radio station in the Caspian Sea port of Lenkoran. An officer of the Interior Ministry troops on peacekeeping duty in Nagorno-Karabakh was killed in the village of Akhullu. Azerbaijanis wearing bulletproof vests and carrying automatic weapons attacked Manashid, another village in the disputed district. Farther south, in the Nakhichevan region, where Azerbaijanis are demanding an open frontier with their ethnic kin across the border in Iran, angry crowds continued to tear down border installations and destroy guard posts...
Activists of the Azerbaijan Popular Front in Nakhichevan, a region bordering Iran, made no secret of their preparations for an incendiary New Year's Eve. They stockpiled axes, shovels and wire cutters, assembled trucks and buses, and held rallies demanding the dismantling of frontier barriers that separate them from Azerbaijanis living in Iran. On the last day of 1989 they struck. A mob of some 7,500 tore up boundary markers and pulled down border posts and watchtowers. Similar attacks over the next two days spread along 500 miles of the border, crippling the communications network in a string...
Last week's eruption had been building for a month. Early in December demonstrators in Nakhichevan, an autonomous region separated from the rest of the republic by a strip of Armenian territory, formed a human chain along the Iranian border and called for the union of the two parts of Azerbaijan. Two weeks later the Popular Front sent an ultimatum to KGB troops guarding the frontier: if fences and barriers were not removed, the Front would tear them down on Dec. 31. KGB commanders made a few concessions -- some crossing points were opened for those who had business or wished...
Added to ethnic grievances in Armenia is the railway blockade, which began + two months ago when Azerbaijanis stopped allowing freight cars through railyards in Nakhichevan. The facility handles 85% of goods bound for Armenia from other Soviet republics, giving the Azerbaijanis a virtual stranglehold. The cutoff has not affected food supplies, many of which are home grown, and markets in Yerevan last week were stocked with fruits and vegetables. But fuel supplies were virtually nonexistent. Car owners waited in lines at the city's gas stations for days at a time. There were also acute shortages of many building supplies...