Armenia, Azerbaijan Warned by Gorbachev to End Their Quarrel

MOSCOW —  President Mikhail S. Gorbachev on Monday gave the two southern Soviet republics of Armenia and Azerbaijan two days to stop their quarreling, to end Azerbaijan’s blockade of Armenia and to agree to talks to settle their feud over the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh.

Otherwise, Gorbachev told the Supreme Soviet, the national legislature, the central government will have to intervene. He said the situation in the region is of “the greatest concern” to the country.

Angered by a dispute that has cost more than 100 lives and thrown into doubt the Communist Party’s ability to rule, Gorbachev made it clear that his patience--and that of the entire Soviet leadership--has run out.

“If the situation does not stabilize, the Soviet government with republican authorities must, I think, make concrete proposals to untie that knot,” he told the Supreme Soviet at the opening of its autumn session. “We shall wait and see a day or two, but let the government be prepared, if the need arises, to make its proposals.”

Refrained From Using Troops

Gorbachev did not disclose what action the government might take. Until now, it has refrained from using troops to avoid bloodshed. But clearly, he sees the situation as a test of political will and a challenge to the party’s new policy on ethnic relations.

“It is important that our society understands that intolerance and force are not methods for solving problems,” Gorbachev said. “One can, on the contrary, only move away from the solution of a problem and complicate it.

“In the conditions of a democratic state under the rule of law that we are striving for, there cannot and must not be any method of political action except reliance on law and the desire to resolve any problems first of all through consensus.”

Despite a series of government measures, including direct rule of Nagorno-Karabakh by Moscow, the 20-month dispute between Armenia and Azerbaijan has worsened, Gorbachev said, and now threatens the stability of the country as a whole.

Armenia has been under a nearly total economic blockade by Azerbaijan for three weeks. Azerbaijan has halted rail and road traffic to and from the neighboring republic to support its claim to Nagorno-Karabakh. Armenia normally receives about 85% of its supplies through Azerbaijan.

Widespread Shortages

Food and fuel are both in short supply now in Yerevan, the Armenian capital, and in many of the republic’s larger towns. Fresh produce is available from the countryside, but sugar, salt, cheese and pasta have disappeared, according to Armenian journalists, and traffic is limited to emergency vehicles. Most factories have stopped working because of shortages of raw materials and energy. They said that reconstruction in the areas devastated by last December’s earthquake that killed 25,000 has come to a halt.

The blockade is unprecedented in Soviet history, and the Armenian Parliament appealed to the central government last week to intervene in the dispute.

The Azerbaijani Parliament responded by passing a law declaring that its present territory is indivisible, underscoring its determination to retain Nagorno-Karabakh, an enclave of Armenian Christians in Muslim Azerbaijan.

Past efforts by Moscow to settle this quarrel--Armenia wants to annex Nagorno-Karabakh--have failed. The region, under effective martial law, is ringed by elite troops, supplied by air and administered by a representative of the central government with plenipotentiary powers.

Afraid of bloodshed and an even sharper conflict, the government has refrained from ordering troops to break the blockade, which was established by the militant new Azerbaijan Popular Front on all the railways and roads leading to Armenia.

The blockade is “shameful for the Communist Party, shameful for the country,” an Armenian deputy, Sergei Ambartsumyan, rector of Yerevan State University, told the legislature. “I believe our (national) Parliament must give guarantees against occurrences like this anywhere.”

A woman deputy from Azerbaijan said that both sides are probably to blame for the prolonged dispute. She urged reconciliation. An Armenian deputy replied that who is at fault may not be clear, but that only his republic is under blockade and that it must be lifted if there is to be progress on the broader issues.

Speaking of the country’s ever-deepening ethnic crisis, Gorbachev said the situation has worsened since the Supreme Soviet concluded its summer session in late July. Last week’s discussion of ethnic questions at a special meeting of the party’s policy-making Central Committee, and the adoption of a new party platform on the matter, has made no apparent difference, he said, so the nation’s political will and his reform policies are now being tested.

Describing the situation in Armenia and Azerbaijan as “extremely tense,” especially in Nagorno-Karabakh, Gorbachev said repeated efforts have not “eased the tight knot of problems,” especially the blockade. But he reported that freight trains are starting to run again.

System Based on Law

The overriding concern, however, is the establishment of a political system based on law and the conciliation of differences, he said, adding:

“The actual strengthing of legality is assuming increasing importance. No law, even the best, will be worth anything if it remains only on paper, if the state fails to ensure its implementation, if citizens do not comply with it conscientiously.”

Armenians had appealed earlier this month to the United Nations to send peacekeeping troops to Nagorno-Karabakh, asserting that the Kremlin has failed to protect them from Azerbaijani attacks despite the presence there of more than 4,000 troops from the Soviet Interior Ministry.

“For long months now, this tiny Christian region . . . has been under the harshest of blockades,” a council representing the Armenian majority in Nagorno-Karabakh said. “Regular killings and actions of violence are being perpetrated against it, and now there is talk of deporting the native population. . . .

“We now appeal to you to do everything possible for the security of the Armenian population of Karabakh, including even the dispatch of a contingent of U.N. soldiers should this become necessary.”

Although government officials said in Moscow that a way around the blockade has been found through neighboring Georgia, local authorities said Monday that virtually nothing has arrived by this route.

Newsprint Allowed In

“During the last 24 hours, only trains with construction materials and newsprint were allowed into Armenia,” the Azerbaijan Popular Front said in a statement received from Baku. “The rest of the freight is not being let through.”

Nagorno-Karabakh was described by the official news agency Tass as very tense, with supply convoys still being attacked by Azerbaijanis. One soldier was seriously wounded in an attack in the regional capital of Stepanakert, according to Tass.

“Troops are guarding wells and oil storage plants, providing for the delivery of food and mail, and unloading helicopters and accompanying convoys with food to Armenian and Azerbaijani settlements,” Tass reported from Nagorno-Karabakh.