BAKU, November 1. /TASS/. Armenia has no grounds to request Russia’s assistance over the fighting in Nagorno-Karabakh, Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev said at talks with Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu on Sunday.
“Azerbaijan carries out military operations on its internationally recognized territory. No operations are conducted on Armenia’s soil, we don’t have such plans,” Aliyev said according to Azerbaijan State News Agency (AZERTAC).
In case Baku had such plans “we would have done this in July,” the Azerbaijani leader said. “Then Armenia attacked us on the state border and we chased [the attackers] from our soil without crossing Armenia’s border,” Aliyev said.
Renewed clashes between Azerbaijan and Armenia erupted on September 27, with intense battles raging in the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh. Both parties to the conflict have reported casualties, among them civilians. Three ceasefire agreements had been reached but shortly after the conflicting sides traded blame for violations.
The conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh, a disputed territory that had been part of Azerbaijan before the Soviet Union break-up, but primarily populated by ethnic Armenians, broke out in February 1988 after the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Region announced its withdrawal from the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic. In 1992-1994, tensions boiled over and exploded into large-scale military action for control over the enclave and seven adjacent territories after Azerbaijan lost control of them. Talks on the Nagorno-Karabakh settlement have been ongoing since 1992 under the OSCE Minsk Group, led by its three co-chairs – Russia, France and the United States.
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