Yahoo – AFP,
5 April 2016
Moscow (AFP) - Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday urged the leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan to ensure a halt to deadly clashes over the disputed Nagorny Karabakh region after a truce was agreed.
Russian President Vladimir Putin (AFP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko) |
Moscow (AFP) - Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday urged the leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan to ensure a halt to deadly clashes over the disputed Nagorny Karabakh region after a truce was agreed.
"Putin
called on both sides to urgently ensure a complete cessation of military
hostilities and respect for the ceasefire," the Kremlin said in a
statement after Putin spoke to the two presidents separately by telephone.
Putin
voiced "serious concern" after four days of fighting killed at least
64 people in the the worst outbreak of violence over the territory since since
an inconclusive truce in 1994.
Putin also
underlined the need to restart internationally moderated peace negotiations
that have failed to definitively end the bitter feud over the past two decades.
Azerbaijan
and Armenian separatists in Nagorny Karabakh on Tuesday said were ending their
fighting after four days of bloodshed, as international powers scrambled to
resolve the worst violence in decades over the disputed region.
Armenian
and Azeri forces said they had agreed a ceasefire to halt the fighting from
0800 GMT.
The truce
came after Azerbaijan's army claimed to have snatched control of several
strategic locations inside Armenian-controlled territory, effectively changing
the frontline for the first time since the 1994 truce.
Separatists
backed by Yerevan seized control of mountainous Nagorny Karabakh, a majority
ethnic Armenian region lying inside Azerbaijan, in an early 1990s war after the
Soviet Union crumbled that claimed some 30,000 lives.
The sides
have never signed a peace deal despite the 1994 ceasefire and sporadic violence
regularly claims lives of soldiers on both sides, though the latest outbreak
represented a serious escalation.
While
ex-Soviet master Moscow has sold arms to both sides and treads a careful line
between the two, it has a military alliance with, and base in, Armenia and far
closer ties to Yerevan.
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