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Karabakh re-elects leader as tensions rumble

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  • Karabakh re-elects leader as tensions rumble

    Agence France Presse
    July 20, 2012 Friday 11:38 AM GMT


    Karabakh re-elects leader as tensions rumble

    STEPANAKERT, Azerbaijan, July 20 2012


    The unrecognised region of Nagorny-Karabakh re-elected leader Bako
    Sahakyan, amid growing tensions between Azerbaijan and Armenia over
    its status, officials said Friday.

    Sahakyan received 66.7 percent of the vote while his main rival,
    retired army general Vitaliy Balasanian, got 32.5 percent, according
    to the preliminary results published on the central election
    commission's website.

    Turnout was 73.4 percent in Thursday's vote, it added.

    Internationally recognised as part of Azerbaijan, Nagorny-Karabakh was
    seized by ethnic Armenians backed by Yerevan in a horrific war after
    the collapse of the Soviet Union that claimed some 30,000 lives.

    With its defence budget boosted from revenues from energy exports,
    Azerbaijan has repeatedly threatened to retake the region and the
    election took place after a surge in deadly shooting incidents across
    the line of contact.

    "By holding free and fair elections, we have demonstrated to the
    outside world that we are a democracy while Azerbaijan continues to be
    an authoritarian state," Sahakyan's spokesman, David Babaian, told
    AFP.

    Azerbaijan has denounced the polls as "illegal".

    "The 'presidential elections' are illegal and they negatively affect
    the process of negotiations," Azerbaijan's presidency spokesman Ali
    Gasanov said in a statement.

    Fatal exchanges of fire across the line of contact that marks the 1994
    ceasefire and at the border between the two Caucasus countries are
    still a frequent occurrence while the forests of Karabakh are littered
    with death-trap landmines from the war.

    In the latest incident that marked the atmosphere of growing tensions
    between the two Caucasus countries, Azerbaijan's defence ministry said
    an officer was killed on Friday by an Armenian sniper.

    "Senior Lieutenant of the Azerbaijani army Jafar Jafarov has been
    killed by an Armenian sniper's shot in the ceasefire violation near
    Alibeyli village of Azerbaijan's Tovuz district," the ministry said in
    a statement.

    The Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), which
    coordinates internationally mediated peace talks on Karabakh, said the
    elections would not influence future decisions on Karabakh's political
    status.

    The vote can "in no way prejudge the final legal status of
    Nagorno-Karabakh or the outcome of the ongoing negotiations to bring a
    lasting and peaceful settlement to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict,"
    Ambassadors of France, Russia, and the United States to the OSCE said
    in a statement on Friday.

    The three countries co-chair the OSCE Minsk Group, which mediates
    peace talks between Armenia and Azerbaijan since the 1994 ceasefire.

    The ambassadors said that "...none of their three countries, nor any
    other country, recognizes Nagorno-Karabakh as an independent and
    sovereign state."

    European Union foreign affairs chief Catherine Ashton warned in a
    statement on Wednesday that the EU would not recognise the elections
    as legitimate.

    She called on the parties "to step up their efforts to find a
    negotiated solution of the conflict."

    Now almost exclusively populated by Armenians, the region calls itself
    the Nagorny-Karabakh Republic but its independence is not even
    recognised by Yerevan.

    Analysts say there is still no meaningful international effort to
    settle the conflict and domestic issues in the two countries could tip
    the dispute into a full-blown conflict.

    mkh-ng-im/sjw/mb

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