AZERBAIJAN AMASSING ARMS FOR POSSIBLE KARABAKH WAR, ALIYEV SAYS

Bloomberg

Jan 16 2012

By Zulfugar Agayev – Jan 16, 2012 9:01 PM GMT+0200 …Azerbaijan
is buying up modern weaponry to be able to regain control of the
breakaway Nagorno- Karabakh region quickly and with few losses should
peace talks with neighboring Armenia fail, President Ilham Aliyev said.

Defense spending will rise 1.8 percent this year to $3.47 billion,
which Aliyev said tops Armenia’s entire state budget.

“It’s not a frozen conflict, and it’s not going to be one,” Aliyev
said today in remarks broadcast on state television channel AzTV.

Oil-rich Azerbaijan fought a war with Armenia over Nagorno- Karabakh,
a majority Armenian-populated enclave that broke free from 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.

From: A. Papazian