SERGE SCHMEMANN

Moscow

THE latest communal atrocities in the former Soviet Union have again thrown the spotlight on the conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh, as bloody as it seems insoluble. Last week, it was Armenians slaughtering Azeris in Khodzhaly, one of the last villages in the enclave in which. Azeris still lived Armenia said the operation was needed to halt the shelling of Stepanakert, the enclave’s capital. Azerbaijan was enraged over images of dead infants and mutilated civilians, and in the tumult President Ayaz Mutalibov resigned.

The bloodshed first flared in February 1988, when the Nagorno-Karabakh parliament called on Armenia and Azerbaijan to transfer the autonomics mountain region from Azerbaijan to Armenia. Nagorno-Karabakh’s population of 188000 was then three-quarters Armenian, though the enclave was in Azerbaijan.

Soviet authorities rejected the petition; demonstrations in Armenia to the flight of terrified Azeris, and of atrocities fired the killings of dozens of Armenians in Azerbaijan. Complicating the conflict is the fact that Azeris are Muslim and Armenians are Christian.

While the Soviet Government was still in power, it tired to maintain a status quo and then, last spring joined with Azerbaijani troops in a disastrous campaign to deport Armenians en masse from Armenian villages in Nagorno-Karabakh.

About 2,000 are estimated to have died in the conflict so far. But the misery has ranged far beyond the killings: the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh have been virtually isolated, supplied only by helicopter, and Armenia has suffered through a winter virtually without heat, since Azerbaijan has cut off oil supplies. Meanwhile, peace talks continue, and so does the killing.

An Azerbaijani woman who claimed her cheeks in despair after Armenian fighters shelled a city near Nagorno-Karabakh. (photo)

Publication date 03/08/1992