Blockade Broken, Trains Supply Armenia, Tass Says

Trains moved vital supplies into Soviet Armenia on Friday, ending a blockade by workers in neighboring Azerbaijan that lasted for more than a month, the official Tass news agency said.

It said hundreds of cars rolled into the southern Soviet republic, three days after the Soviet legislature authorized the army to take over operation of the railways.

There was no confirmation of the report from Yerevan, the Armenian capital, where a spokesman for the Armenian Foreign Ministry had said the republic was relying entirely on emergency supplies sent in from Georgia to the northwest.

Tass said the trains passed between Armenia and Azerbaijan, where workers have blockaded railways to press the Armenians to drop their claims to the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh.

“However, the situation on the lines remains complex,” the agency said. “More than 5,000 cars have built up on main lines and sidings in Azerbaijan, twice the normal figure.”

The agency said a special plan, similar to the one used during last December’s earthquake in Armenia, had been introduced to enable twice the number of trains to travel on the line linking the two republics.

It said the area’s rail network would be cleared within five to six days, adding that about 60,000 rail cars were trapped in adjacent regions.

Its report was datelined Baku, the Azerbaijani capital, and issued jointly with Azerinform, Azerbaijan’s news agency.

The Armenian Foreign Ministry spokesman, speaking by telephone from Yerevan, said earlier, however, troops sent to Armenia’s southeast border following the parliamentary resolution had failed to break the Azerbaijani blockade.

“The situation is getting worse and worse,” he said. “Nothing is getting through from Azerbaijan. I don’t know what the troops are doing, but it isn’t working.”