Azerbaijan Won’t Yield Territory

The Parliament of Azerbaijan refused today to give up a region of the southern republic, Nagorno-Karabakh, that Armenia has voted to annex. A Soviet official said the dispute was at a deadlock.

The session of the Supreme Soviet of Azerbaijan was broadcast live on the republic’s television stations. Soviet Foreign Ministry spokesman Gennady I. Gerasimov told reporters in Moscow that the dispute has taken the form of a “collision” between two articles of the Soviet Constitution--one requiring that any territorial changes be approved by the republics involved and another, cited by Armenians, providing for “the free self-determination of nations and the voluntary association of equal Soviet Socialist Republics.”