By Mark Dovich
The European Union, France, Russia, and the United States have all issued calls for restraint following Tuesday’s deadly clashes near the Armenian border village of Tegh that left at least four Armenian and three Azerbaijani soldiers dead.
“The conflict cannot have a military solution, and the use of force to resolve disputes is unacceptable,” the U.S. State Department said Wednesday in a comment to Voice of America’s Armenian language service.
Armenian Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan also raised the issue of the clashes in a phone call with U.S. acting Assistant Secretary of State Dereck Hogan, according to an Armenian government readout.
Across the Atlantic, a European Union spokesperson made similar appeals “for restraint and for the settlement of all disputes by peaceful means,” while Maria Zakharova, the spokesperson for Russia’s Foreign Ministry, called for “Baku and Yerevan to show mutual restraint.”
Meanwhile, France’s Foreign Ministry issued a notably stronger statement that explicitly urged “respect for Armenia’s territorial integrity and the withdrawal of Azerbaijani forces from occupied positions on the Armenian side of the line of contact.”
That quickly prompted a rebuke from Baku, which dismissed Paris’ comments as “not reflect(ing) reality” and “demonstrat(ing) an unfair position” on the long-running conflict.
On Tuesday afternoon, the defense ministries of Armenia and Azerbaijan each said that a deadly firefight had broken out near Tegh, the final Armenian village on the road to Nagorno-Karabakh, which self-styled Azerbaijani environmental activists have been blocking for more than four months.
After several hours of fierce fighting, Yerevan reported four soldiers killed and six others wounded, while Baku reported three soldiers killed and four others wounded, marking the deadliest incident between the two sides in months.
A spokesperson in Brussels later told the Armenpress news agency that EU civilian monitors who patrol sections of the Armenian side of the border were not in Tegh during the clashes.
Instead, it was “members of the (Russian) Armed Forces and FSB Border Service in the area” who “immediately…took measures to de-escalate” the situation, according to Zakharova, the Russian government spokesperson.
However, Armen Khachatryan, the deputy chair of the Armenian parliament’s defense committee and a lawmaker from the ruling Civil Contract party, quickly rejected those remarks, telling reporters Wednesday that the clashes in Tegh were ended following direct, high-level talks between Yerevan and Baku.
“There is democracy in Armenia,” Zakharova said in response. “Everyone has the opportunity to express their point of view.”
