Moscow/Yerevan - Border fighting between Armenia and Azeri troops in the disputed region of Nagarno-Karabakh turned to heavy artillery shelling this week in the worst clashes since a 1994 ceasefire that ended a six-year, full-scale war. Between 15 and 16 soldiers died and dozens were injured in Wednesday night clashes according to conflicting casualty claims by Armenian and Azeri officials.
Azeri Foreign Minister Elmar Mamedyarov on Thursday accused Armenia of initiating the battle to distract from violent post- election opposition protests at home that led the president to impose a 20-day emergency rule over the capital Yerevan.
But Armenian President Robert Kocharian hit back Thursday: "The Azeris thought that the situation in Armenia had dulled the vigilance of our armed forces in Karabakh, that all our large military divisions had been relocated."
The unresolved status of Nagarno-Karabakh, an Azeri province controlled by ethnic Armenian separatists, was the hottest topic in Armenia's February 19 elections and daily protests since then have led to clashes with police in which eight people died Sunday.
The opposition's leader, Armenia's first post-Soviet president Levon Ter-Petrosian, pledged to "correct" what he called "his biggest mistake": bringing into government top military officials from Nagorno-Karabakh such as incumbent Kocharian and Prime Minister Serzh Sarkisian, whose presidential election win he now refuses to recognize.
Ter-Petrosian accuses the Karabakh Clan, as his supporters have dubbed them, of widespread corruption and nepotism, including signing over control of crucial economic sectors to Russia, thereby transforming a long-time alliance into a "vassal-sovereign" relationship.
Coming three weeks after Kosovo's declaration of independence from Serbia, Russia and the United States fear escalating tensions in the region and have called for restraint.
The mountainous Caucasus region where Nagarno-Karabakh lies has emerged as strategically important as it lies along gas routes from the energy-rich Caspian Sea region to Europe.
Western powers fear further instability could disrupt gas routes and further undermine a fragile security situation in the neighbourhood, which is host to a Russian military base and borders Iran.
The United States and NATO declared Thursday that Kosovo's independence from Serbia could not serve as a precedence for Nagarno- Karabakh or any other region.
Georgia's breakaway South Ossetia region on Wednesday asked for the European Union, the United Nations and Russia to recognize its independence, bearing out Russia's claim that Kosovo's independence would lead to a "parade of sovereignty" in the Caucasus.
Azeri President Ilham Aliyev firmly rejects Kosovo's independence as illegal and has upped rhetoric about using any means to achieve unity ahead of October presidential elections.
"We have been buying military machinery, airplanes and ammunition to be ready to liberate the occupied territories, and we are ready to do this," Russian newspaper Noviye Izvestia quoted Aliyev as saying on Thursday.
"The conflict will come to an international solution when Armenia feels Azerbaijan's force," he said.
Oil-rich Azerbaijan has increased its military spending to more than 1 billion dollars in 2008, provoking a mini-arms race with Armenia, which in turn has hiked its military spending by 20 per cent in the past year.
Thomas Gomart, head of the Russian/CIS programme at the Paris- based Institut Francais des Relations Internationales, voiced concern over the "evolution of the rhetoric" in a recent interview with Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.
"The disproportion in the two countries' military spending is worrying. Azerbaijan's expenditure could be compared to the total Armenian budget," he said.
Observers also fear that Armenia's post-election instability could aggravate relations with Turkey which has allied with fellow Muslim state Azerbaijan to blockade landlocked Armenia along its borders.
Ter-Petrosian, who was forced from power by the current leadership in 1998 for his proposal to compromise in peace talks with Azerbaijan, has argued the blockades are killing Armenia's possibilities for growth. "Russia cannot be Armenia's only road to the outside world," he has said.
But a construction boom and a healthy economy spoke in favour of the established leadership in the recent elections, and despite rallying thousand-strong opposition protests Ter-Petrosian remains widely unpopular among those who recall the economic hardships of the post-Soviet transition.
Nagarno-Karabakh native and war hero Sarkisian is expected to keep up the hawkish stance set by his political mentor Kocharian during his decade at the helm, perpetuating fears of a new war along the border where gunfire breaks out regularly.
