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
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