Azerbaijan may use force in Karabakh after Kosovo

By Lada Yevgrashina

BAKU (Reuters) - Azerbaijan's president said on Tuesday his country was ready to take back breakaway Nagorno-Karabakh by force if need be and was buying military equipment and arms in preparation.

President Ilham Aliyev linked his comments to the newly-declared independence in Kosovo which he said had emboldened ethnic Armenian separatists in Nagorno-Karabakh.

In a sign of disapproval of Kosovo's independence Azerbaijan's parliament later voted to withdraw a 33-strong Azeri peacekeeping team that has been serving there under NATO command since 1999.

Former Soviet Azerbaijan has been trying to restore control over Nagorno-Karabakh, where ethnic Armenian separatists threw off Azeri rule in the 1990s in a war that killed about 35,000 people.

"We have been buying military machinery, airplanes and ammunition to be ready to liberate the occupied territories, and we are ready to do this," Turan quoted Aliyev as saying.

He added the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict with neighbouring Armenia could be resolved only on the principle of Azerbaijan's territorial integrity.

The fragile peace between Azerbaijan and Armenia has held thanks to a ceasefire announced in May 1994 when large-scale hostilities ended.

But as Aliyev spoke, local television channels reported that two Azeri soldiers died in an exchange of fire near Nagorno-Karabakh's border earlier on Tuesday.