ANKARA: Azerbaijan says it shot down Armenian drone

World Bulletin, Turkey
Jan 30 2015

Azerbaijan says it shot down Armenian drone
Nagorno-Karabakh officially refutes this information.

World Bulletin / News Desk

Azerbaijan said on Thursday it had shot down an Armenian drone near
the breakaway Nagorno-Karabakh region, a report dismissed by Armenia
as “absurd”.

Renewed violence this year along the border between Armenia and
Azerbaijan and around Nagorno-Karabakh, which lies inside Azerbaijan
but is controlled by its majority ethnic Armenians, has underlined the
risk of a wider conflict breaking out in the South Caucasus, which is
crossed by oil and gas pipelines.

The Azeri Defence Ministry said the drone had been shot down over
Azeri territory but Artsrun Hovhannesyan, the Armenian defence
minister’s press secretary, denied the report.

“Nagorno-Karabakh officially refutes this information. It is absurd,” he said.

Fighting over Nagorno-Karabakh erupted in 1991 as the Soviet Union
broke up and a ceasefire was called in 1994. But Azerbaijan and
Armenia have regularly traded accusations of further violence around
Nagorno-Karabakh and along their border.

Nagorno-Karabakh has run its own affairs with heavy military and
financial backing from Armenia since the war that killed about 30,000
people. Armenian-backed forces also hold seven Azeri districts
surrounding Nagorno-Karabakh.

Efforts to reach a permanent settlement have failed despite mediation
led by France, Russia and the United States.

Oil-producing Azerbaijan, host to global majors including BP , Chevron
and ExxonMobil, frequently threatens to take the mountain region back
by force, and is spending heavily on its armed forces.

Armenia, an ally of Russia, says it would not stand by if
Nagorno-Karabakh were attacked.

From: A. Papazian