PERSPECTIVE ON ARMENIA : A Dying People Needs Urgent Help : The world has been astonishingly indifferent to this case of ‘ethnic cleansing,’ which begs for U.N. intervention.

Armenia today reminds me of Leningrad in 1941-43, when it was besieged by Hitler’s army for 900 days. The bread ration is less than half a pound per person a day. There is no electricity, television, radio, newspapers. Telephones aren’t working. Homes have no heat or hot water. Garbage hasn’t been collected all winter--in some places mounds are four stories high. Refugees are living in freezing metal cisterns formerly used to store gasoline. Packs of hungry dogs roam the streets--people arm themselves with sticks, and the weak are afraid to go out at all. It’s impossible to send packages or wire money to Yerevan, the capital, and there is no regularly scheduled air or train service.

The blockade of Armenia by Azerbaijan constitutes a new type of racism--people are suffering and dying only because they are the ethnic kin of the Armenian population of Nagorno-Karabakh, who are fighting for their independence. And the blockade is still in force, accompanied by the bombing and shelling of Armenian border towns, even though Armenia has stated repeatedly that it makes no territorial claims on its neighbors.

The conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh, a mountainous enclave populated mostly by ethnic Armenians but located inside Azerbaijan, began five years ago. In February, 1988, the local Parliament asked the central government of the Soviet Union to remove the region from Azerbaijanian jurisdiction. The Parliament’s peaceful petition was answered by anti-Armenian pogroms, instigated by Azerbaijanian officials in several Azerbaijan cities.

This bout of “ethnic cleansing” sparked reciprocal violence by Armenians. The result was that 400,000 Armenian refugees fled Azerbaijan and 130,000 Azerbaijanian refugees fled Armenia.

Next came the forcible deportation of Armenians from Karabakh. This was carried out by Soviet army units collaborating with Azerbaijanian militia detachments, and was accompanied by the destruction of towns and villages, burning of crops, scattering of livestock, murder, rape, hostage-taking and the torture of Armenian detainees in Azerbaijanian prisons. No attempt was made to hide the purpose of this campaign; it was meant to drive out the Armenians and settle the Karabakh question Stalin-style: “No people, no problem.” And it was the forcible expulsions and the resistance they provoked that escalated into a war.

In the fall of 1989, Azerbaijan initiated a blockade of Armenia. At that time, Andrei Sakharov said in the Supreme Soviet that for Azerbaijan, Karabakh was a question of prestige; for the Armenians of Karabakh, a question of their lives. He appealed to Western countries to airlift supplies to Armenia and to take steps to end the blockade.

Sakharov argued that the United Nations and the European Community were obliged to defend international law (a blockade is an act of war that can inflict great suffering on the civilian population). Nevertheless, the blockade is still in force; it has destroyed Armenia’s economy and has left 4 million Armenians on the brink of a national catastrophe, at risk of perishing from cold, hunger and disease--many have already died.

Western countries, the United Nations and the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe have displayed astonishing indifference to the Karabakh crisis and continue to call it (following Mikhail Gorbachev’s lead) “the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict.”

But Armenia is not at war with Azerbaijan. The real issue is the government of Azerbaijan’s war against the people of Karabakh. The outside world has failed to make a serious attempt to settle the conflict peacefully or to assist the refugees.

Armenia doesn’t need American soldiers or weapons. Armenia’s government was elected democratically. Armenia is not at war with its neighbors. Armenia is not waging a civil war against its own people. The people of Karabakh have no need of American soldiers, either. They spilled their own blood to open up a humanitarian corridor to Armenia--their only link to the outside world.

But there is need for U.N. peacekeeping forces to separate the warring sides, and also for diplomatic recognition of Karabakh’s right to independence, which the people of the enclave conclusively affirmed in a referendum in December, 1991.

The West must employ its diplomaticand political resources to persuade Azerbaijan to end its blockade and Turkey to open a corridor for humanitarian aid to Armenia--substantial immediate assistance is needed to keep people alive and overcome the effects of the blockade.

Failure by Western countries--and above all, the United States--to act now will mean another shameful capitulation of democracy to violence. In that event, we will soon see war, destruction and brutality on the same scale as in the former Yugoslavia. And we shall be just as helpless.

It is still not too late to resolve the Karabakh conflict and to save Armenia by making use of the principles of human rights. This would be a blessing for both Armenians and Azerbaijanis.