Border dispute
November 22, 2009
Azerbaijan's President Ilham Aliyev has threatened to use military force against Armenia if the two neighboring countries do not resolve a long-running territorial dispute during talks in Munich, starting on Sunday.
The territory in question is the Nagorno-Karabakh enclave which has been under the control of Armenian troops and ethnic Armenian forces since 1994.
"If that meeting ends without result, then our hopes in negotiations will be exhausted and then we are left with no other option," Aliyev said on Saturday. "We have the right to liberate our land by military means."
Azerbaijan is aiming to strike a deal whereby most of the seven Azeri districts captured during the war with Armenia would be returned.
The meeting between Armenia's Serzh Sargsyan and Azerbaijan's Ilham Aliyev is due to take place at the residence of the French Consul General and will be mediated by Western diplomats.
If war were to erupt, it would threaten a key oil and gas transit region to the West.
It will be the sixth time the two leaders have met this year, and the first meeting since Armenia normalized diplomatic ties with Turkey after a century of hostility.
vj/Reuters/AFP/AP
Editor: Andreas Illmer