YEREVAN, July 17. /TASS/: Armenia’s army manages to control the situation on the border with Azerbaijan and needs assistance neither from the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) nor the joint Russian-Armenian military contingent, Armenian Defense Ministry Spokesman Artsrun Ovannisyan said on Friday.
"The joint Russian-Armenian contingent has its own plan of activities. At the moment, the Armenian armed forces can cope and are coping with the situation and the issue of involving either the CSTO or the joint contingent is not on the agenda," he said.
The situation on the Azerbaijani-Armenian border escalated on July 12, when Azerbaijan said that the Armenian army had tried to attack Azerbaijan’s positions with use of artillery systems. Armenia, in turn, said the situation on the border had aggravated after Azerbaijan’s attempted attack. Baku has reported the death of twelve servicemen. Yerevan has said four Armenian soldiers were killed and ten more were wounded.
On July 17, both sides reported that the situation on the border was relatively calm.
The conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the highland region of Nagorno-Karabakh, a disputed territory that had been part of Azerbaijan before the Soviet Union break-up, but primarily populated by ethnic Armenians, broke out in February 1988 after the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Region announced its withdrawal from the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic. In 1992-1994, tensions boiled over and exploded into large-scale military action for control over the enclave and seven adjacent territories after Azerbaijan lost control of them. Talks on the Nagorno-Karabakh settlement have been ongoing since 1992 under the OSCE Minsk Group, led by its three co-chairs - Russia, France and the United States.
