Nagorno-Karabakh Cease-Fire Shattered
Shelling by Armenian and Azerbaijani forces shattered a cease-fire in Nagorno-Karabakh only a few hours after it took effect Thursday, and both sides suffered casualties, officials and news reports said.
Armenian President Levon Ter-Petrosyan sent a special message to the leaders of 14 countries, including the United States, urging them to dissuade Azerbaijan from forming its own army and to help work out a peace plan.
The brief cease-fire was among the few formal truces achieved in the bloody, four-year confrontation over mountainous Nagorno-Karabakh, a predominantly Christian Armenian region within Muslim Azerbaijan.
Iran brokered the truce, and Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Velayati resumed his mediation when fighting broke out again.
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