Azerbaijan and Armenia brush off suggestion of peace talks

Leaders of Azerbaijan and Armenia refused peace talks on Tuesday as conflict over the separatist territory of Nagorno-Karabakh killed and injured dozens in three days of heavy fighting.

Armenia said one of its warplanes was shot down by a fighter jet from Azerbaijan’s ally Turkey, killing the pilot, in a major escalation of the violence. Turkey and Azerbaijan denied it.

Armenia says Turkey has supplied Syrian troops, weapons and trainers to Azerbaijan, despite calls by the international community for talks to end the decades-old conflict between the two former Soviet republics in the Caucasus Mountains region. Turkey has also denied its presence there.

Ankara has sent Syrian mercenaries to Libya, where they are fighting for the Government of National Accord in Tripoli and its allied militias.

“Turkey, according to our information, looks for an excuse for a broader involvement in this conflict,” Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said.

The conflict centres on the separatist region of Nagorno-Karabakh, which lies within Azerbaijan but has been held by Armenian ethnic soldiers since 1994.

Mr Pashinyan called on Azerbaijan to end its aggression, saying negotiations and compromise were the only way to resolve the conflict.

“It is very hard to talk about negotiations … when specific military operations are under way,” he told Russian state broadcaster Rossiya 1.

Azerbaijan must “immediately end its aggression towards Nagorno-Karabakh and Armenia".

“We all perceive this as an existential threat to our nation," Mr Pashinyan said.

"We basically perceive it as a war that was declared to the Armenian people, and our people are now simply forced to use the right for self-defence.”

Azerbaijani President Ilkham Aliyev said on the same broadcaster that Baku was committed to negotiating a resolution but that Armenia was obstructing the process.

“The Armenian prime minister publicly declares that Karabakh is Armenia, period," Mr Aliyev said. "In this case, what kind of negotiating process can we talk about?”

Since Sunday, the Nagorno-Karabakh Defence Ministry reported 84 servicemen were killed. Both countries accused each other of firing into their territory outside the area on Tuesday.

The separatist region of about 4,400 square kilometres is 50 kilometres from the Armenian border. Soldiers backed by Armenia also occupy some Azerbaijani territory outside the region.

The Armenian military said an Su-25 from its air force was shot down in Armenian airspace by a Turkish F-16 fighter jet that took off from Azerbaijan, and the pilot was killed.

Fahrettin Altun, communications director for Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, denied Turkey's involvement.

Mr Erdogan urged Armenia to withdraw immediately from the separatist region, and Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said Ankara was “by Azerbaijan’s side on the field and at the negotiating table".

Earlier in the day, Armenian officials said Azerbaijani forces opened fire on a military unit in the Armenian town of Vardenis, setting a bus on fire and killing a civilian.

Armenia's Foreign Ministry denied shelling the Dashkesan region in Azerbaijan and said the reports were laying the groundwork for its rival “expanding the geography of hostilities, including the aggression against the Republic of Armenia".

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has pushed for “an immediate ceasefire and a return to the negotiating table” in calls with the leaders of both countries, her office said.

Mrs Merkel's spokesman, Steffan Seibert, said the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe offered an appropriate forum for talks and that the two countries’ neighbours “should contribute to the peaceful solution".

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said during a visit to Greece that “both sides must stop the violence” and work “to return to substantive negotiations as quickly as possible".

Russia, which along with France and the US co-chairs the Minsk Group formed in 1992 to mediate the conflict, urged every country to help bring about a peaceful resolution of the conflict.

“We call on all countries, especially our partners such as Turkey, to do everything to convince the opposing parties to cease fire and return to peacefully resolving the conflict by politico-diplomatic means,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Tuesday.

Mr Putin spoke to Mr Pashinyan on Tuesday for the second time in three days, urging de-escalation and, like the other leaders, an immediate ceasefire.