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Uzbekistan expresses concern over developments on Azerbaijan-Armenia border

The situation on the Azerbaijani-Armenian border escalated on July 12, when Azerbaijan’s Defense Ministry said that Armenian army units had tried to attack Azerbaijan’s positions at the Tovuz section of the border with the use of artillery systems

TASHKENT, July 15./TASS/. Uzbekistan is strongly concerned about the developments on the border between Azerbaijan and Armenia, and urges the sides to restraint and negotiations, the Foreign Ministry said in a statement uploaded to its website on Wednesday.

"Uzbekistan comes out in favor of maximum restraint and urges the sides to political-diplomatic negotiations to normalize the situation and find the way out of the situation," the statement said. Further escalation may result in casualties among the civilians, destroy economic ties and communications within the framework of the Commonwealth of Independent States as well as damage regional security, it emphasized.

The situation on the Azerbaijani-Armenian border escalated on July 12, when Azerbaijan’s Defense Ministry said that Armenian army units had tried to attack Azerbaijan’s positions at the Tovuz section of the border with the use of artillery systems. Baku said that eleven Azerbaijani military servicemen had been killed during three days of hostilities. Armenia, in turn, reported that four servicemen were killed in the hostilities, while two police and three servicemen were slightly injured.

The conflict between neighboring Armenia and Azerbaijan over the highland region of Nagorno-Karabakh, a disputed territory that had been part of Azerbaijan before the Soviet Union’s break-up but was mainly populated by ethnic Armenians, broke out in the early 1988 after the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Region announced its withdrawal from the Azerbaijani Soviet Republic.

In 1991-1994, the confrontation spilled over into large-scale military action for control over the enclave and some adjacent territories after Azerbaijan lost control of them.

Talks on the Nagorno-Karabakh settlement process have been going on since 1992 within the so-called OSCE Minsk Group co-chaired by Russia, France and the United States.