Nagorno Karabakh

Azerbaijan, Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh moved toward agreement Friday on a cease-fire in the 6-year-old war over control of the Armenian enclave inside Azerbaijan. The Itar-Tass news agency said the accord was reached in Moscow during talks mediated by Russian Defense Minister Pavel S. Grachev. A protocol was signed by the defense ministers of Armenia and Azerbaijan and a negotiator from the enclave.

Fighting has intensified in the disputed enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh, with Azerbaijani troops back on the defensive despite weeks of attempting to seize the initiative in the 6-year-old war with Armenian forces. The Interfax news agency reported over the weekend that Azerbaijani troops were "fiercely resisting" an advancing Armenian force in northern Karabakh. The Azerbaijani Defense Ministry said about 40 Armenians have been killed in the last few days.

Armenian forces seized Azerbaijan's last outpost on its 100-mile southwestern border with Iran, Azerbaijani television said Thursday. The Armenians used tanks, armored vehicles and infantry in the five-hour overnight attack on the border post, located near the Khudaferin bridge south of Fizuli, the report said. Fizuli, captured earlier by the Armenians, is about 150 miles southwest of Baku, the capital.

Representatives of nine nations began talks here Thursday in the latest attempt to resolve the ethnic war on Russia's southern border between Azerbaijan and Armenia as political leaders in the region stepped up warnings that the conflict could escalate into a full-scale international war.

Nagorno-Karabakh, a remote region within Azerbaijan populated mainly by Armenians, is experiencing the same deadly pattern of "ethnic cleansing" that we have seen in Bosnia. The United Nations and its member states, which failed utterly in the case of Bosnia, have an opportunity to do better in dealing with ethnic conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh and to show that something has been learned from the tragedy in the former Yugoslavia.

An estimated 80,000 to 100,000 Azerbaijanis, forced to flee their homes by a massive Armenian offensive in southwestern Azerbaijan, are heading toward the Iranian border as the ethnic war in Nagorno-Karabakh widens into a full-scale international conflict. Up to 2,000 Azerbaijani refugees have already crossed into Iran, and thousands of people are streaming toward the border behind them, reported Mahmoud Said, the U.N. representative in Baku, the Azerbaijani capital.

Nagorno-Karabakh, a belligerent in Europe's longest-running ethnic war, flatly rejected a U.S.-backed peace plan on Wednesday as too dangerous for its civilian population. The refusal by the Armenian-populated enclave in Azerbaijani territory appeared to torpedo chances for implementation of the American-Russian-Turkish initiative, which was intended to end five years of fighting that has killed more than 3,000 people.

An international initiative on stopping the war over the Nagorno-Karabakh enclave received a boost Thursday after Azerbaijan backed the plan and Armenia gave conditional approval. The proposal by the United States, Russia and Turkey calls for the withdrawal of Armenian troops from Azerbaijan's Kelbajar region and a 60-day cessation of hostilities starting Wednesday, to be followed by peace talks. The three countries said the plan, announced Monday, must be accepted or rejected in full.

Armenia welcomed an offer by Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin to mediate an effort to end its five-year war with Azerbaijan. Meanwhile, heavy fighting flared Saturday in the enclave at the heart of the conflict. Yeltsin's offer Friday "will facilitate the establishment of a truce and active peacemaking process," said Aram Abramian, a spokesman for Armenian President Levon Ter-Petrosyan, in a telephone interview from the Armenian capital, Yerevan.

President Boris N. Yeltsin intervened in the seemingly endless conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh on Friday, but efforts to arrange a cease-fire seemed doomed. In a message to the presidents of rivals Azerbaijan and Armenia, the Russian leader expressed alarm at the fighting and offered to mediate, his spokesman said in a statement. Both the Transcaucasian nations denied any knowledge of a cease-fire announced Thursday by Russian Defense Minister Pavel S. Grachev and due to begin at noon (1 a.m.