EAST BLOC IN TURMOIL : Disputed Soviet Area May Be Returned to Azerbaijan

The Soviet Parliament on Tuesday approved a plan that apparently returns control of the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh to Azerbaijan, but it also ordered the republic to work closely with the Armenian majority in the region.

Armenian deputies walked out of the hall when the directive on the Nagorno-Karabakh region was approved at a closed meeting on the final day of the Supreme Soviet’s fall session.

The neighboring republics of Azerbaijan and Armenia have been waging a bloody dispute over the region. It is located entirely within the borders of Muslim Azerbaijan, but its Christian Armenians outnumber Azerbaijanis by 4 to 1.

A special Kremlin commission was formed in January to impose order on the region, where more than 60 people have died in ethnic clashes since February, 1988.

The directive that was passed by the legislature eliminated the commission, which was headed by Arkady Volsky.

“Nobody wanted to talk about it; no one understood it,” said Zuri Balayan, an ethnic Armenian from Nagorno-Karabakh, in a telephone interview. He was one of the deputies who walked out of the hall.

Nevertheless, it passed by a wide margin. Balayan said more than 350 deputies voted for it, only four voted against it and 20 abstained.

Asked what the likely effect of the directive will be, Balayan said only, “We’ll wait and see.”

The dispute has been one of the sources of continuous tension between the two Caucasus republics in the southern part of the Soviet Union, and despite the presence of soldiers, some reports have warned of a virtual state of civil war.