AZERI SOLDIER KILLED BY ARMENIAN FORCES NEAR BREAKAWAY REGION
By Zulfugar Agayev
BusinessWeek
Nov 3 2011
Nov. 3 (Bloomberg) — An Azeri soldier was killed last night in a
firefight with Armenian troops on the militarized cease-fire line
between the two former Soviet republics.
The officer was killed in fighting “rebel forces” near the breakaway
region of Nagorno-Karabakh, Teymur Abdullayev, a spokesman for the
Defense Ministry, said in a telephone interview from the capital, Baku.
Oil-rich Azerbaijan fought a war with Armenia over Nagorno- Karabakh,
a majority Armenian-populated enclave that broke free of Baku’s
control following the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991. The
territory remains a potential flash point in a region where Russia
fought a five-day war with Georgia in 2008 after separatist tensions
flared up over the breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.
While the hostilities largely ended after a Russia-brokered cease-fire
in 1994, the countries have failed to reach a peace agreement.
–Editors: Balazs Penz, Alan Crosby