Tag Archives: Russia

Putin proposes Russia, U.S. extend New START arms control treaty for one year

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russian President Vladimir Putin proposed on Friday that Russia and the United States extend their New START arms control treaty that expires in February for at least a year without imposing any conditions.

The New START (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty) accord, signed in 2010, limits the numbers of strategic nuclear warheads, missiles and bombers that Russia and the United States can deploy.

A failure to extend the pact would remove all constraints on U.S. and Russian deployments of strategic nuclear weapons and their delivery systems, fueling a post-Cold War arms race and tensions between Moscow and Washington.

Putin, speaking at a meeting by video link with Russia’s Security Council that was broadcast on state television, said the treaty had worked effectively until now and it would be “extremely sad” if it were to stop working.

“In this regard, I propose… extending the current treaty without any conditions for at least a year so that meaningful negotiations can be conducted on all the parameters of the problems…” he said.

Russia and the United States, which has called for China to be included in the arms control treaty, have appeared at odds over extending the pact despite several months of talks.

On Wednesday, Moscow denied U.S. assertions that the two sides had reached an agreement in principle.

(Reporting by Gabrielle Tétrault-Farber and Vladimir Soldatkin; writing by Tom Balmforth; editing by Jon Boyle and Tomasz Janowski)

Nagorno-Karabakh ceasefire hopes sink as death toll rises

By Nailia Bagirova and Nvard Hovhannisyan

BAKU/YEREVAN (Reuters) – Hopes of a humanitarian ceasefire ending fighting over Nagorno-Karabakh sank further on Thursday as the death toll mounted and Armenia and Azerbaijan accused each other of launching new attacks.

Armenia accused Turkey of blocking flights carrying emergency aid from using its airspace, and Azerbaijan’s president warned of “new victims and new bloodshed” from fighting over the mountain enclave that broke out on Sept. 27.

Azeri President Ilham Aliyev demanded that Armenia “halt attempts to capture liberated territories back” and said his country would take all regions of Nagorno-Karabakh if Armenia “acts negatively.”

Last Saturday’s ceasefire, aimed at letting the sides swap detainees and bodies of those killed in the clashes, has had little impact on the fighting around Nagorno-Karabakh, a mountain territory internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan but populated and governed by ethnic Armenians.

In the deadliest flare-up since a 1990s war killed about 30,000 people, 604 Nagorno-Karabakh defense personnel have been killed, ethnic Armenian authorities say.

On Thursday, three Azeri civilians were killed and three were wounded during a funeral in Azerbaijan’s Terter region when an artillery shell fell on a cemetery, presidential aid Hikmet Hajiyev said on Twitter.

That would add to Azeri estimates provided on Wednesday that 43 civilians had so far been killed. Baku does not disclose military casualties. The prosecutor’s office said earlier on Thursday that two civilians had been wounded in shelling of the Aghdam area.

The Armenian prosecutor-general’s office said Azeri drones had killed two soldiers in the Vardenis region of Armenia on Wednesday, raising the Armenian military death toll to five. The servicemen were not involved in military action, it said.

A tweet from Nagorno-Karabakh’s ombudsman accused Azerbaijan of using heavy rockets to target civilian infrastructure in the town of Stepanakert.

Reuters could not independently verify the reports.

HUMANITARIAN CONCERNS

International organizations, including the International Committee of the Red Cross, have warned that the conflict, coming on top of the COVID-19 pandemic, could leave tens of thousands of people in need of aid over coming months.

Zareh Sinanyan, Armenian High Commissioner for Diaspora Affairs, said the delivery of 100 tonnes of aid from the United States was being delayed as Turkey had prohibited Armenia-bound humanitarian aid flights over its airspace.

Armenia’s civil aviation committee was told on Wednesday the Qatar Airways flight from Los Angeles was cancelled but gave no reasons, said the committee’s head, Tatevik Revazyan.

“We have grounds to claim that Turkey closed the air route deliberately,” Revazyan told Reuters, adding alternative routes over Russia or Georgia were being sought.

Turkey’s foreign ministry, which handles airspace issues, was not immediately available to comment.

Aside from humanitarian concerns, fears are growing of Russia and Turkey being sucked in. Turkey’s military exports to its ally Azerbaijan have risen six-fold this year, data shows, and Armenia has a defense pact with Russia.

In a phone call on Wednesday with Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan, Russian leader Vladimir Putin expressed concerns about the participation of Middle East fighters in the conflict, though Turkey and Azerbaijan deny the presence of such fighters.

The fighting is also close to Azeri pipelines which carry natural gas and oil to international markets. Aliyev accused Armenia on Wednesday of trying to attack the pipelines, a charge that Armenia denied.

(Additional reporting by Margarita Antidze in Tbilisi and Jonathan Spicer in Ankara; Writing by Sujata Rao; Editing by Timothy Heritage)

Russia, U.S. remain divided over extending last nuclear arms pact

MOSCOW/WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Russia and the United States on Wednesday remained at odds over extending the last major arms control pact between the world’s largest nuclear weapons powers, with Moscow denying U.S. assertions of an agreement in principle.

The New START (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty) accord, signed in 2010, limits the numbers of strategic nuclear warheads, missiles and bombers that Russia and the United States can deploy. It expires in February.

A failure to extend the pact would remove all constraints on U.S. and Russian deployments of strategic nuclear weapons and their delivery systems, fueling a post-Cold War arms race and tensions between Moscow and Washington.

U.S. officials have indicated that an agreement to extend it has been reached in principle.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Wednesday that no deal had yet been reached despite what the Kremlin hoped was a joint understanding that the pact did need to be extended.

“As for the understanding for the need to extent the START treaty, we hope we are on the same track in this regard,” Peskov said on a conference call with reporters. “We understand that it needs to be extended, that this is in the interest of our two countries and the strategic security of the whole world.”

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo declined to comment when asked to elaborate on the agreement in principle that the top U.S. arms control negotiator, Marshall Billingslea, on Tuesday said had been reached “at the highest levels.”

“We would welcome the opportunity to complete an agreement based on understandings that were achieved over the last couple of weeks about what that range of possibilities look like for an extension of New START,” Pompeo told a State Department news conference.

He said the United States would continue the talks on the treaty, which can be extended for up to five years with the agreement of both presidents.

“I am hopeful that the Russians will find a way to agree to an outcome that frankly I think is in their best interest and in our best interest,” he said.

Pompeo reiterated a call for China to join the United States and Russia in talks on a trilateral nuclear arms control accord. China, whose nuclear arsenal is much smaller than the U.S. and Russian stockpiles, repeatedly has rejected the proposal.

Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said earlier on Wednesday Moscow did not see prospects for extending the new START arms control treaty with Washington but planned to continue talks nonetheless.

New START is a successor to the original agreement signed in 1991 between the then-Soviet Union and the United States.

Arms deals between President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in the 1980s, and their successors George H.W. Bush and Russian President Boris Yeltsin in the 1990s, underscored growing trust between the superpowers and contributed to ending the Cold War.

(Reporting by Gabrielle Tétrault-Farber Anton Kolodyazhnyy in Moscow and Jonathan Landay and Humeyra Pamuk in Washington.; Editing by Andrew Osborn and Marguerita Choy)

One American, two Russians blast off to International Space Station

By Joey Roulette and Olzhas Auyezov

WASHINGTON/ALMATY (Reuters) – A Russian Soyuz spacecraft carrying a U.S. astronaut and two Russian cosmonauts blasted off from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Wednesday and successfully reached orbit, live footage broadcast by Russia’s space agency Roscosmos showed.

The crew members traveling to the International Space Station (ISS) are Kate Rubins, a NASA microbiologist who in 2016 became the first person to sequence DNA in space, and Russian cosmonauts Sergey Ryzhikov and Sergey Kud-Sverchkov.

The mission is the last scheduled Russian flight carrying a U.S. crew member.

Since the space shuttle program ended in 2011, NASA has relied on Russia to ferry its astronauts to the space station, an orbiting laboratory 250 miles above Earth that has housed international crews of astronauts continuously for nearly 20 years.

The U.S. space agency in 2014 contracted Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Boeing Co. to build competing space capsules in an effort to reclaim NASA’s launch independence.

The $8 billion program enabled SpaceX’s first manned trip to the space station in May, marking the first from home soil in nearly a decade.

NASA has purchased additional crew seats from Russia as its public-private crew program faced delays, with Rubins’ mission being the most recent.

The U.S. is scheduled to begin operational missions on SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule.

“We have an incredible partnership,” Rubins said in an interview from Russia’s Star City before her flight. “We’ll continue to train crews over here and we’re going to have cosmonauts come to the Johnson Space Center and train.”

NASA and Roscosmos have committed to continue the flight-sharing partnership and are in talks to fly Russian astronauts on U.S. vehicles and to fly U.S. astronauts on Russian rockets when needed, a spokesperson for Roscosmos told Reuters.

“Of course, mutual flights are of interest for ISS reliability and continuous operations,” the spokesperson said. “This approach (mixed crew flights) will ensure delivery of the crew to the station, should a problem with the partner spacecraft occur.”

(Additional reporting by Gabrielle Tétrault-Farber in Moscow; Editing by Dan Whitcomb, Leslie Adler and Andrew Osborn)

Humanitarian crisis feared as Nagorno-Karabakh ceasefire buckles

By Nvard Hovhannisyan and Nailia Bagirova

YEREVAN/BAKU (Reuters) – Armenia and Azerbaijan accused each other on Tuesday of violating a ceasefire agreed three days ago to quell fighting over Nagorno-Karabakh, drawing warnings from international groups of a humanitarian crisis in the region.

The Russia-brokered truce is buckling despite mounting calls from world powers to halt the fighting, with U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and the Minsk Group security watchdog among those urging greater commitment to the ceasefire terms.

A Reuters cameraman witnessed shelling in the town of Martuni in Nagorno-Karabakh, a mountain enclave which is internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan but governed and populated by ethnic Armenians.

A Reuters television crew in Terter in Azerbaijan also said the city center was being shelled earlier on Tuesday.

Azerbaijan accused Armenian forces of “grossly violating the humanitarian truce”, which was agreed on Saturday to allow the sides to swap prisoners and bodies of those killed..

Defense ministry spokesman Vagif Dargiahly said Armenia was shelling the Azeri territories of Goranboy and Aghdam, as well as Terter. Azeri forces were not violating the truce, he added.

Armenian defense ministry spokeswoman Shushan Stepanyan denied the accusation. She said Azeri forces had resumed military operations after an overnight lull, “supported by active artillery fire in the southern, northern, northeastern and eastern directions”.

The fighting which erupted on Sept. 27, is the worst since a 1991-94 war over Nagorno-Karabakh that killed about 30,000.

It is being closely watched abroad, not only due to its proximity to Azeri energy pipelines to Europe but also because of fears that Russia and Turkey could be drawn in.

Russia has a defense pact with Armenia and Turkey is allied with Azerbaijan.

“CATASTROPHIC CONSEQUENCES”

The Minsk Group called on the Armenian and Azeri leaders to immediately implement the ceasefire to prevent “catastrophic consequences for the region”.

The 11-member group includes both Russia and Turkey, but the latter is not involved in the Nagorno-Karabakh talks. Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu suggested holding talks that would include Turkey.

Ceasefire demands were “reasonable,” according to Cavusoglu, but he said the international community should ask Armenia to withdraw from Azeri territory.

“Sadly no such call is being made,” he told reporters.

Influential Turkish politician Devlet Bahceli, whose party supports President Erdogan’s AKP in parliament, took a more belligerent note, telling Azerbaijan to secure Nagorno-Karabakh by “hitting Armenia over the head over and over again.”

While Turkey denies military involvement in Nagorno-Karabakh, Armenian President Armen Sarkissian told Germany’s Bild newspaper Ankara’s behavior was worrying.

“I worry because, firstly, there is a third party involved. If it were only about Nagorno-Karabakh and Azerbaijan, I would be much more hopeful that the conflict can be contained,” he said.

DEAD AND WOUNDED

The death toll has risen further, meanwhile. Nagorno-Karabakh officials said 542 servicemen had been killed so far, up 17 from Monday.

Azerbaijan has reported 42 Azeri civilian deaths and 206 wounded since Sept. 27. It has not disclosed military casualties.

Martin Schuepp, Eurasia regional director for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), said his organization was in “continuous discussions” to facilitate the handover of detainees or bodies of those killed.

But the security situation meant “it has not been possible for us to access all locations that might have been affected,” Schuepp said.

The conflict is also worsening the spread of COVID-19, World Health Organization spokesman Tarik Jasarevic told a United Nations briefing in Geneva.

Armenia’s new cases had doubled over the past 14 days as of Monday, while new infections were up approximately 80% over the past week in Azerbaijan, Jasarevic said. He warned of “direct disruption to health care and a further burden on health systems that are already stretched during the COVID pandemic.”

With tens of thousands of people potentially needing help in coming months, the ICRC is appealing for another 9.2 million Swiss francs ($10.10 million) to fund its humanitarian efforts in the region, Schuepp said.

(Additional reporting by Margarita Antidze in Tbilisi, Riham Alkousaa in Berlin, Stephanie Ulmer-Nebehay in Geneva, Tuvan Gumrukcu and Jonathan Spicer in Ankara; Writing by Sujata Rao; Editing by Giles Elgood, Timothy Heritage, William Maclean)

Nagorno-Karabakh ceasefire strained by new fighting reports

By Nailia Bagirova and Nvard Hovhannisyan

BAKU/YEREVAN (Reuters) – Azerbaijan and ethnic Armenian forces accused each other on Monday of launching new attacks in and around Nagorno-Karabakh, increasing strains on a two-day old humanitarian ceasefire intended to end heavy fighting over the mountain enclave.

Russia, which brokered the ceasefire, appealed for both sides to respect it and Luxembourg reiterated European Union calls for Turkey, an ally of Azerbaijan, to do more to secure an end to hostilities that have killed hundreds of people.

The fighting, the deadliest over Nagorno-Karabakh in over 25 years, is being watched closely abroad partly because of the proximity of the fighting to Azeri gas and oil pipelines and the risk of regional powers Turkey and Russia being dragged in.

Both Ankara and Moscow are under growing pressure to use their influence in the region to end the fighting.

The humanitarian ceasefire is meant to allow ethnic Armenian forces and Azerbaijan to swap prisoners and bodies of people killed in two weeks of fighting over Nagorno-Karabakh, which is internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan but governed and populated by ethnic Armenians.

But the ceasefire has frayed quickly. Azerbaijan said on Sunday it launched airstrikes against an Armenian regiment, following what it said was an Armenian rocket attack on an apartment building. Armenia denied carrying out such an attack.

On Monday, Azerbaijan’s defense ministry said Armenian forces had tried to attack its positions around the Aghdere-Aghdam and Fizuli-Jabrail regions, and were shelling territories in the Goranboy, Terter and Aghdam regions inside Azerbaijan.

Nagorno-Karabakh said its forces had inflicted losses on Azeri forces and that large-scale military operations were continuing in the Hadrut area of the mountain enclave.

Reuters could not independently verify the reports.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Russia, which has a defense pact with Armenia, was monitoring the events and asked Azeri and ethnic Armenian forces to respect the ceasefire.

APPEALS TO TURKEY

Zohrab Mnatsakanyan, Armenia’s foreign minister, met Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in Moscow. He accused Azerbaijan of acting to expand Turkey’s influence in the region and of using pro-Turkish mercenaries – charges Ankara has denied.

Accusing Azerbaijan of ceasefire violations, Mnatsakanyan said: “We want the ceasefire, we want verification mechanisms on the ground, which will indicate the perpetrator, which will demonstrate the party, which is not faithful to this ceasefire.”

Speaking before a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Berlin, Luxembourg’s foreign minister, Jean Asselborn, urged Turkey to do more to end the latest flare-up of the decades-old conflict.

“Turkey has not called for a truce yet, and I believe they are completely wrong with this position,” Asselborn said.

“I think the message from Luxembourg will be a call on Turkey, a NATO member, to help arrange a ceasefire quickly.”

Azeri President Ilham Aliyev repeated calls for Turkey, which has voiced strong support for Azerbaijan since the fighting began, to be involved in peacemaking. Mediation has for years been led by France, Russia and the United States.

“Even if many Western countries do not want to accept it, Turkey’s word is big, it’s fully independent,” he said.

The renewed fighting is the worst since a 1994 ceasefire ended a war over Nagorno-Karabakh that killed at least 30,000.

Azerbaijan said 41 Azeri civilians had been killed and 207 wounded in the fighting since Sept. 27. Azerbaijan has not disclosed information about military casualties.

Nagorno-Karabakh has said 429 of its servicemen and more than 20 civilians have been killed in the fighting.

(Additional reporting by Margarita Antidze in Tbilisi, Writing by Sujata Rao, Editing by Andrew Osborn and Timothy Heritage)

Opposition in Kyrgyzstan claims power after storming government buildings

By Olga Dzyubenko and Vladimir Pirogov

BISHKEK (Reuters) – Opposition groups said they had seized power in Kyrgyzstan on Tuesday after taking control of government buildings during post-election protests in the strategically important Central Asian state.

President Sooronbai Jeenbekov said his country, a close ally of Russia, was facing an attempted coup d’etat. Two presidents have been toppled by revolts in Kyrgyzstan in the past 15 years.

Jeenbekov called for calm and ordered security forces not to open fire on protesters after overnight unrest in which the government said one person was killed and 590 wounded. Officials said that Sunday’s parliamentary election would be rerun, but it was not clear who would organize it or govern until then.

Burnt out cars littered Bishkek, the capital, after protesters stormed the main government building, known as the White House, which briefly caught fire before emergency services put out the blaze.

Debris from inside, including government papers, and office furniture, was strewn outside after protesters ransacked parts of it.

Kyrgyzstan, which borders China, has long been a platform for geopolitical competition between Moscow, Washington and Beijing. It houses a Russian military base and its leaders and main opposition groups have traditionally backed close ties with Russia.

On Tuesday, however, unidentified intruders torched a Russian-operated factory at the country’s second-largest gold deposit in Kyrgyzstan, Jeruy, fording its owners to suspend development of the site.

Protesters also showed up at smaller mines developed by Chinese and Turkish companies and demanded that they halt operations, according to local news website Akipress. It was not clear if the companies complied.

Canada’s Centerra Gold, which operates the country’s biggest gold deposit, said it was monitoring political events but that its operations were continuing uninterrupted.

RIVAL GOVERNMENTS

The opposition said it had set up a coordination council and was discussing the line-up of a provisional government. “The leaders of parties that took part in the election have assumed responsibility for restoring public order,” the council said.

Opposition groups also freed Almazbek Atambayev, a former president jailed on corruption charges after falling out with Jeenbekov. Atambayev was not named to any role, however, and Jeenbekov showed no immediate signs of relinquishing power.

The cabinet, housed in a building separate from the White House, said it continued to function although Prime Minister Kubatbek Boronov has not appeared since the unrest began.

The central election commission said it had annulled the results of the election and parliament would hold an emergency meeting on Wednesday. Several opposition politicians urged lawmakers to install a provisional cabinet to legitimize a transfer of power.

Interior Minister Kashkar Junushaliyev did not show up for work on Tuesday, a ministry spokesman said, saying that Kursan Asanov, an opposition politician and a former senior security official, had taken over as acting interior minister.

Police had been ordered to ensure citizens’ safety and prevent clashes and looting, the same spokesman said.

The Russian embassy to Kyrgyzstan said it supported resolving the situation in the country through legal means while ensuring stability and people’s safety.

CONTESTED VOTE

Trouble erupted on Monday after police used teargas and water cannon to disperse thousands of people demanding the results of the parliamentary election be annulled.

Western observers said the election, which appeared to have handed most seats to two establishment parties supporting closer links between the former Soviet republic and Russia, had been marred by vote buying.

One of the parties was close to Jeenbekov, the president.

As well as storming the White House, which houses both the president and parliament, protesters took over several other buildings, including the mayor’s office.

They appointed their own acting head of national security, acting prosecutor general and a commandant of Bishkek, although there were no indications of how much power they wielded.

Protesters also freed several former senior officials jailed under Jeenbekov, including ex-prime minister Sapar Isakov and Atambayev’s former chief of staff Farid Niyazov.

Several provincial governors have resigned after rallies began on Tuesday in several provincial centers, most of them anti-government, according to local media reports.

Jeenbekov’s supporters were gathering in the southern city of Osh, the same reports said, where his brother Asylbek Jeenbekov called for unity and order.

(Writing by Olzhas Auyezov; Editing by Andrew Osborn and Philippa Fletcher)

COVID-19 vaccine may be ready by year-end: WHO’s Tedros

By Stephanie Nebehay

GENEVA (Reuters) – A vaccine against COVID-19 may be ready by year-end, the head of the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Tuesday, without elaborating.

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus called for solidarity and political commitment by all leaders to ensure equal distribution of vaccines when they become available.

“We will need vaccines and there is hope that by the end of this year we may have a vaccine. There is hope,” Tedros said in closing remarks to the WHO’s Executive Board meeting that examined the global response to the pandemic.

The EU health regulator has launched a real-time review of a COVID-19 vaccine developed by U.S. drugmaker Pfizer and Germany’s BioNTech, it said on Tuesday, following a similar announcement for rival AstraZeneca’s jab last week. The announcement by the European Medicines Agency (EMA) could speed up the process of approving a successful vaccine in the bloc.

Nine experimental vaccines are in the pipeline of the WHO-led COVAX global vaccine facility that aims to distribute 2 billion doses by the end of 2021.

So far some 168 countries have joined the COVAX facility, but neither China, the United States nor Russia are among them. The Trump administration has said it is relying instead on bilateral deals to secure supplies from vaccine makers.

“Especially for the vaccines and other products which are in the pipeline, the most important tool is political commitment from our leaders especially in the equitable distribution of the vaccines,” Tedros said.

“We need each other, we need solidarity and we need to use all the energy we have to fight the virus,” he said.

(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva; Editing by Michael Shields and Alexandra Hudson)

Assad blames Turkey for Nagorno-Karabakh fighting, Russia sees ‘terrorism’ risk

YEREVAN/BAKU (Reuters) – Syrian President Bashar al-Assad accused Turkish counterpart Tayyip Erdogan of being the main instigator in the deadliest fighting between Armenian and Azeri forces for more than 25 years.

In an interview published on Tuesday that is likely to exacerbate international frictions over the clashes in the South Caucasus, Assad also said militants from Syria were being deployed to the conflict area.

Turkey has denied involvement in the fighting in and around Nagorno-Karabakh, a mountain enclave that belongs to Azerbaijan under international law but is governed by ethnic Armenians, and has dismissed accusations that it sent mercenaries to the area.

But Assad told Russian news agency RIA: “He (Erdogan) … was the main instigator and the initiator of the recent conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh between Azerbaijan and Armenia.”

Reiterating accusations first levelled by French President Emmanuel Macron that Turkey has sent Syrian jihadists to fight in the conflict, Assad said: “Damascus can confirm this.”

Assad appeared to offer no evidence for his allegation. Ankara, which backs rebels trying to oust him, did not respond immediately but has described similar accusations as part of attempts by Armenia to create “dark propaganda” about Turkey.

The fighting that broke out on Sept. 27 has increased concern that a wider conflict could be triggered, dragging in Turkey, which has expressed solidarity with Azerbaijan, and Russia, which has a defence pact with Armenia.

The head of Russia’s SVR Foreign Intelligence Service, Sergei Naryshkin, underlined Moscow’s concerns by warning that Nagorno-Karabakh could become a launch pad for “international terrorist organisations” to enter Russia and other countries.

But Russian news agency TASS also quoted him as saying in a statement that he expected Armenia and Azerbaijan to return to the negotiating table.

LONG-RUNNING CONFLICT

The fighting is the latest in a decades-old conflict that is closely watched abroad, partly because of Nagorno-Karabakh’s proximity to pipelines that carry Azeri gas and oil to Europe.

Nearly 300 people have been reported killed – and many more are feared dead – in the worst fighting since a 1991-94 war that killed about 30,000.

Azerbaijan says Azeri cities outside Nagorno-Karabakh have been struck, and both sides say the other has hit civilian areas. Each denies targeting civilians.

Armenia’s defence ministry said the situation was now “relatively calm”, but it remained tense. The Azeri defence ministry told the army to be ready to launch “large-scale” strikes on military infrastructure if Armenia fired short-range Russian-made Iskander missiles.

Nagorno-Karabakh said 244 of its servicemen and 19 civilians had been killed since Sept. 27 and many more have been wounded.

The Azeri prosecutor’s office said 27 Azeri civilians had been killed in the renewed fighting. Azerbaijan has not provided details of its military casualties.

Ceasefire appeals led by the United States, Russia and France, which have for years led mediation efforts, have failed to halt the fighting.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said during a visit to Azerbaijan’s capital, Baku, on Tuesday that international peace efforts had achieved no concrete results in decades and a ceasefire alone would not end the fighting.

“The whole world now needs to understand this cannot go on like this,” Cavusoglu said after talks with Azeri President Ilham Aliyev, who hailed Turkey’s support and Ankara’s “stabilising role in the region.”

Armenia has said it will engage with Washington, Paris and Moscow on peace moves. Azerbaijan says Armenia must set a timetable to withdraw from Nagorno-Karabakh and surrounding Azeri territories, and wants Turkey involved in peace efforts.

(Additional reporting by Margarita Antidze in Tbilisi, Tuvan Gumrukcu in Ankara, and Alexander Marrow and Maxim Rodionov in Moscow; Writing by Timothy Heritage; Editing by Andrew Cawthorne and Giles Elgood)

U.N. war crimes experts urge Turkey to rein in rebels in Syria

By Stephanie Nebehay

GENEVA (Reuters) – Turkey must rein in Syrian rebels it supports in northern Syria who may have carried out kidnappings, torture and looting of civilian property, United Nations war crimes investigators said on Tuesday.

The panel also said transfers of Syrian nationals detained by the opposition Syrian National Army to Turkish territory for prosecution may amount to the war crime of unlawful deportation.

In a report covering the first half of 2020, the U.N. Commission of Inquiry on Syria said assassinations and rapes of civilians by all sides, marked by “sectarian undertones”, were on the rise in the conflict that began in 2011.

“In Afrin, Ras al Ain and the surrounding areas, the Turkey-backed Syrian National Army may have committed the war crimes of hostage-taking, cruel treatment, torture and rape,” panel chair Paulo Pinheiro told a news briefing.

“Turkey should act to prevent these abuses and ensure the protection of civilians in the areas under its control,” he said.

Turkey’s Defense Ministry says it goes to great lengths to avoid civilian casualties during military operations in Syria.

Ankara and Moscow back opposing sides in Syria. Russia, along with Iran, supports President Bashar al-Assad’s forces and Turkey backs rebels trying to oust him. Turkey seized control of the border town of Ras al Ain last year in an offensive to push back Syrian Kurdish YPG fighters, which Ankara views as a terrorist group.

Turkey wields influence as it funded, trained and allowed the rebel force known as the Syrian National Army to enter Syria from Turkey, panelist Hanny Megally said.

“Whilst we can’t say Turkey is in charge of them and issues orders and has command control over them, we think that it could use its influence much more to bring them into check and certainly to pressure them to desist from the violations being committed and to investigate them,” he said.

Investigations carried out so far by the Syrian National Army are insufficient, even as violations increase, he added.

(Editing by Timothy Heritage)