Free Republic

After taking the stage at a campaign stop in New Hampshire, President Trump tweeted his congratulations Sunday to the Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, “who just agreed to adhere to a cease fire effective at midnight.” “Many lives will be saved,” Trump wrote, adding that he was “proud of my team,” including Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Deputy Secretary of State Stephen E. Biegun, and the White House's National Security Council, for “getting the deal done!” The deal brokered by the U.S. comes after Armenian Foreign Minister Zohrab Mnatsakanyan and Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov...

Hostilities between Armenia and Azerbaijan have reportedly flared up overnight, with reports of gun and mortar fire coming from the border. Both Azeri and Armenian defense ministries accused each other of provoking the escalation. Azerbaijan said Armenian troops opened fire 127 times over 24 hours along the border. They are using mortars and heavy machine guns, the statement released on Saturday said. Armenia said Azeri troops went on the offensive overnight and are using tanks artillery and military aircraft. Militias in the unrecognized Karabakh republic, the focal point of the conflict, claimed they shot down an Azeri helicopter gunboat. Azerbaijan...

The Azerbaijani army has reportedly killed 47 Armenian soldiers in recent clashes, as President Ilham Aliyev visited a frontline zone near the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region. Citing Russian diplomatic sources, Azerbaijan Press Agency (APA) reported 47 Armenian servicemen were killed and more than 100 were wounded near the border between the two countries, with the Azerbaijani Defense Ministry also stating that the Armenians suffered a “considerably greater number of losses” during the clashes. Last week the simmering tensions boiled over into the fiercest clashes seen since a cease-fire was agreed upon in 1994. Meanwhile, Aliyev was briefed on Aug. 6 by...

During the second half of September 2012, several Armenian news agencies reported that Khojali Airport in Azerbaijan’s breakaway region of Karabakh was about to be reopened (news.am, September 26). The Khojali Airport near Khankendi (also called Stepanakert in Armenian) was built in 1974 and was intended to serve flights from Baku. Since the outbreak of war in 1992, the airport has remained shut down, but in 2008, the Armenian government began undertaking reconstruction efforts. The airport’s capacity is planned to serve around 100 passengers per hour. In December 2011, the Armenian media reported that Eduardo Ernekyan, an Argentine businessman of...

Azerbaijan has warned that Baku will re-examine its relations with France, Russia and the United States after the three countries voted against a UN motion on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. The UN General Assembly on March 14 adopted a non-binding resolution demanding the "immediate, complete and unconditional" withdrawal of all Armenian forces from Azerbaijan's territory. Thirty nine countries voted in favor. But more than 100 countries abstained. Seven countries, however, including Russia, the United States, and France, voted against. The three countries are co-chairs of the Minsk Group, which is trying to facilitate a negotiated settlement to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. They...

YEREVAN (Reuters) - Kosovo's independence will strengthen a bid by the Armenian-backed breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh to be recognized as a state, Armenia's prime minister Serzh Sarksyan told Reuters in an interview. Sarksyan drew a link between the Serbian province which will declare independence on Sunday and Nagorno-Karabakh, where ethnic Armenian separatists broke away from Azerbaijan in a war in the 1990s but have failed to win international recognition. "We are getting a rather favorable position," said Sarksyan, front-runner in the February 19 Armenian presidential election. "Recognition of Kosovo's independence can be welcomed by us. "If countries recognize the independence...

A top Armenian official said he was losing hope for a solution to the long and bitter territorial dispute with neighboring Azerbaijan which he accused of trying to negotiate through blackmail. Rival claims have hung over tiny, mountainous Nagorno-Karabakh from the early Soviet era. An ethnic Armenian region inside Azerbaijan, it was the scene of one of the bloodiest of the ethnic wars that broke out in the ashes of the Soviet Union. "I'm not very optimistic about this issue," defense Minister Serzh Sarksyan told Reuters in an interview late on Monday. "I do not see anything serious (in negotiations)...