Armenia, Azerbaijan trade new Karabakh accusations

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(Reuters) – Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan traded new accusations on Monday with the president of Azerbaijan, saying his neighbour was failing to take motion on a treaty to finish 30 years of hostility over Nagorno-Karabakh.

The dispute over the area, a mountainous territory inside Azerbaijan managed for the reason that Nineteen Nineties by ethnic Armenians, flared in 2020 right into a six-week conflict through which Azeri troops regained swathes of territory. The two sides agreed to work on a peace plan after Russia brokered a ceasefire.

Pashinyan, quoted by Russian and Armenian information media, stated Azerbaijan was politicising peace efforts, together with the difficulty of constructing a rail hyperlink by way of Armenia between Azerbaijan and its western enclave of Nakhichivan.

The goal of huge protests in latest weeks accusing him of creating too many concessions on Karabakh, Pashinyan additionally stated greater than 50 Armenian servicemen confronted treason expenses.

While Pashinyan and Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev have held a sequence of conferences up to now 18 months, progress in direction of a peace treaty has been sluggish.

“Azerbaijan refuses to speak, publicly accusing Armenia of refusing to speak,” Armenia’s Armenpress information company quoted Pashinyan as telling an internet information convention. “My evaluation is one: it’s carried out to legitimise a new conflict towards Armenia.”

On the allegations towards Armenian officers, Russia’s TASS information company stated Pashinyan advised reporters that “an incredible many affairs are actually taking place behind closed doorways and the general public is unaware of them … More than 50 serviceman are accused of espionage and treason.”

The TASS account gave no additional particulars.

Aliyev final week accused Armenia of inaction on the treaty.

Armenia was failing to abide by its “authorized obligations” to permit free entry for development of the rail line, Azerbaijani media quoted him as saying after talks with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.

Pashinyan stated Aliyev was blocking progress on the difficulty by linking it to the return to Armenia of prisoners of conflict.

(Reporting in Winnipeg by Ronald Popeski; enhancing by Richard Pullin)



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