INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Armenia and Azerbaijan on Monday traded accusations of provoking a shootout along their troubled border, just hours before the arch-foes
were to hold U.S.-mediated peace talks.The incident came ahead of a meeting in Washington of Armenian Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan and
Azerbaijani counterpart Jeyhun Bayramov for a fresh round of peace talks hosted by U.S
Secretary of State Antony Blinken.With Moscow increasingly isolated on the world stage following its February invasion of Ukraine, the U.S
and the EU have taken a leading role in mediating the Armenia-Azerbaijan talks.The escalation at the border came a week after Russian
President Vladimir Putin hosted Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev for talks, as Moscow seeks to
maintain its role as a powerbroker between the ex-Soviet republics.In the early hours of Monday, Azerbaijani forces opened fire on Armenian
positions "in the eastern sector of the Armenian-Azerbaijani border," the defense ministry in Yerevan said in a statement.The statement said
there were "no casualties, and the situation on the frontline was relatively stable" on Monday morning.Azerbaijan's defense ministry for its
part accused Armenian forces of shooting at the positions of Azerbaijani troops stationed at several locations on the frontier.Kremlin
spokesman Dmitry Peskov on Monday called on both parties to "refrain from the actions and steps that could lead to an escalation of
weeks of fighting in 2020 claimed more than 6,500 lives before a Russian-brokered truce ended the hostilities.Under the 2020 deal, Armenia
ceded swathes of territory it had controlled for decades and Russia stationed peacekeepers to oversee the fragile ceasefire.There have been
frequent exchanges of fire at the Caucasus neighbors' border since the 2020 war.In September, more than 280 people from both sides were
killed in new clashes.When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, ethnic Armenian separatists in Nagorno-Karabakh broke away from Azerbaijan
The ensuing conflict claimed around 30,000 lives.
