“This incident yet again emphasizes that in the absence of a delimited border, the 1991 line must be respected and the forces of either side withdrawn to safe distances from this line to prevent any similar incidents from occurring,” an EU foreign policy spokeswoman, Nabila Massrali, said in a statement.
Massrali also urged Yerevan and Baku to restart their stalled talks on the delimitation of the Armenian-Azerbaijani border.
The two sides blame each other for the deadly fighting that broke out near the Armenian border village of Tegh. Azerbaijani army units took up new positions in the area on March 30 after advancing into what Yerevan regards as sovereign Armenian territory.
The Armenian Defense Ministry said that its troops came under fire on Tuesday afternoon as they fortified one of their outposts just outside Tegh. It released an eight-minute video that shows a large group of Azerbaijani soldiers approaching Armenian servicemen and then arguing and coming to blows with them. The scuffle degenerated into warning shots that apparently preceded the firefight.
Russia said on Wednesday that its soldiers and border guards deployed in nearby Armenian territory helped to stop the worst Armenian-Azerbaijani border clash in months. No further ceasefire violations have been reported from this or other sections of the border since Tuesday evening.
“This provocation is another Azerbaijani attack on the territorial integrity of the Republic of Armenia,” the Armenian Foreign Ministry charged on Tuesday night. It urged the international community to stop Baku from further escalating the situation.
Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov claimed the following morning that the fighting was the result of an Armenian “provocation.” He said Yerevan must refrain from actions “whose consequences could be terrible for Armenia as they were yesterday.”
The EU statement did not explicitly blame either side for the escalation. But it did say that Armenia and Azerbaijan must respect their agreements “regarding the mutual recognition of territorial integrity in line with the 1991 Almaty Declaration.”
It is not clear whether Tuesday’s skirmishes were witnessed by any of some 100 EU monitors who were deployed along the Armenian side of the heavily militarized border in late February. The monitoring mission made no public statements.
Meanwhile, the Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova, said the latest fighting shows that Moscow was right to oppose the EU mission and warn that it could only heighten tensions between the two South Caucasus nations.
"We had … predicted the inevitable,” Zakharova told reporters in a clear jibe at the Armenian government.
