From: TEX5HAD@CMS1.LEEDS.AC.UK (Haluk DEMIRBAG)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.turkish
Subject: 'Jackals' threaten Azeri-Armenian peace efforts (fwd)
Date: 11 Nov 1992 19:12:57 -0600
Organization: UTexas Mail-to-News Gateway
Reply-To: Turkish Cultural Program List <TRKNWS-L%USCVM.BitNet@pucc.PRINCETON.EDU>
NNTP-Posting-Host: cs.utexas.edu

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>From: clarinews@clarinet.com (GUY CHAZAN)
Subject: 'Jackals' threaten Azeri-Armenian peace efforts
Date: 11 Nov 92 02:08:03 GMT



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	KAZAKH, Azerbaijan (UPI) -- The mosaic-covered stone slabs in the
hills outside the abandoned village of Bala-Jafarli, where the three
Caucasian republics border each other, have been transformed from a
friendship monument to a demarkation for hatred.
	The slabs are a Soviet-era tribute to ethnic harmony called ``The
Friendship of Nations'' monument, representing Azerbaijan, Georgia and
Armenia.
	But the glib ``friendship'' imposed on the area by Moscow has shown
itself in natural light to be the opposite -- real, bitter hatred.
	The area was a favorite picnic stop for motorists. There were flower
beds and fountains. But since fighting flared up on the Azeri-Armenian
border, only soldiers on patrol stop to rest. The mosaic is crumbling.
The rose beds are overgrown with weeds.
	One cold day in late October, Azeri and Armenian leaders met for
crisis talks to avert an escalation in the cross-border warring. They
converged on an Armenian government dacha slap in the middle of no-man's
land, where the sound of sniper fire echoes off the hillside daily.
	``Someone somewhere wants to make sure we do not agree,'' Grigory
Grigorian, chief of Armenia's border forces, told the military
commanders, civilian leaders and police chiefs attending the meeting.
	The two neighbors were confident of a breakthrough until recently. An
agreement signed by Azeri, Armenian and Russian defense chiefs in the
Russian resort of Sochi in September led to a cease-fire that seemed to
be holding.
	But in late October armed forces on both sides resumed random
shelling of border settlements, threatening the fragile peace of the
Sochi accords. The two states, as always, blamed each other.
	``The Armenians have no unified command over their troops,'' said
Gen. Isa Sadegov, Azeri army commander of the Kazakh military district.
``They have jackals on the hilltops who do not obey anyone.''
	Sadegov said Armenian forces had been pounding the Azeri town of
Kazakh using artillery, tanks and rocket launchers.
	But Armenian leaders from across the border say that if there are any
jackals in the hills, they are Azeris. They claim 300 Azeri artillery
shells exploded in the border town of Noyembrian alone in a period of
several days.
	``Local chiefs want peace on the frontier,'' said Armenian Border
Regiment Commander Gen. David Khachmanukyan. ``But when they move toward
achieving it, someone spoils things and you end up with mistrust on both
sides.''
	Fighting broke out on the border in late 1989 as the ethnic conflict
between Armenians and Azeris in the Nagorno-Karabakh region of
Azerbaijan spilled over into armed clashes on the frontier between the
two Transcaucasian states. With the collapse of the Soviet Union and
independence of the republics, a civil war within Azerbaijan escalated
into an international war between Azerbaijan and Armenia.
	In March 1990, Azeris say, Armenian militants attacked the frontier
village of Baganisairum near Kazakh and burned it down, driving out the
inhabitants. Since then, Armenian fighters have gone on to seize six
more Azeri villages in the area.
	The village of Sofulu, captured by Armenians last April, is visible
from Bala-Jafarli, looking like a handful of dirty sugarcubes scattered
on the hillside. Armenian snipers man posts on the commanding Satalmysh
heights, among abandoned vineyards, cornfields and tobacco plantations.
	No one works in the fields near the border any more. Whole farming
communities, terrorized by the constant shelling and sniper fire, have
fled for the regional center of Kazakh.
	``This year we harvested grapes from only 58 percent of our
vineyards,'' said Kazakh Mayor Zavanchir Dzharchiev. ``We have had to
give away 1,500 head of cattle to other districts, away from the
fighting.''
	Kazakh, a busy market town of 19,000 people with cotton-spinning
factories, carpet workshops and food processing enterprises, has seen
its once flourishing economy nosedive since the war.
	The place is full of refugees from neighboring villages. But the
violence has caught up with them: Armenian shelling of Kazakh, which
started last April, has put thousands of lives at risk and paralyzed the
town.
	The Sochi agreement signed Sept. 6 called for a cease-fire along the
entire Azeri-Armenian border and the Karabakh front, the dispatching of
military observers from Russia and other former Soviet states to the
area, and the withdrawal of troops from the combat zone.
	After observers were installed to monitor the cease-fire and troops
began to withdraw, attempts were made to lift a long-standing blockade
of the Kazakh-Idzhevan railway line that has deprived Armenia of vital
fuel supplies for months.
	However, according to the Armenian side, Azerbaijan sent its
observers home ahead of schedule, a decision that led to renewed
fighting and a resumption of the rail blockade.
	At Bala-Jafarli, the sides agreed to reimpose a cease-fire and set up
a radio hotline in both military headquarters to speed up communications
in case of violations.
	There was fraternal hand-shaking, back-slapping and wise-cracking
near the ``Friendship of Nations'' monument that cold day in October, as
Armenian leaders and their Azeri counterparts agreed on efforts to save
the Sochi peace.
	The ``jackals'' on the hillside were invisible at their posts,
looking on. As yet it is far from clear whether they share their leaders
optimism -- or their desire to see an end to the war.
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