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March 28
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Armenian News-NEWS.am presents excerpts from the Bug Pit blog author Joshua Kucera’s article published in the EurasiaNet.org.

At the time when the U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visits the South Caucasus, the Azerbaijan-Armenia border witnesses one of the worst violence in recent years. On Monday, three Armenian soldiers were killed by Azerbaijani side, and on Tuesday, the Armenians responded back by killing five Azerbaijanis. As a matter of fact, the violence was not on the line of the contact between Azerbaijan and Nagorno-Karabakh, but at the state border between Armenia and Azerbaijan.

The violence occurred at an unsuitable time for Clinton’s visit, who said a mild statement in Yerevan "calling on everyone to renounce force as well as refraining from violence."

Expert Charles King stated that Karabakh is the most militarized border in Eurasia, "yet it’s received the least amount of attention over the years" compared to the unsettled conflicts in Georgia and Cyprus. Maybe the experts agree to the point that full-scale war is less likely to begin from an accidental escalation of these sorts of border clashes than from a strategic decision by one of the sides (obviously most likely Azerbaijan).

"The only thing that will alter the strategic calculations on both sides was for the "international community" to raise the stakes for starting a conflict. But then you think of those six lonely European monitors, and what a small priority this is for anyone outside of Armenia and Azerbaijan,” King concludes.

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