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Time - Man of the Year
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Time_Man_of_the_Year_Compact_Publishing_3YX-Disc-1_Compact_Publishing_1993.iso
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1992-09-10
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THE WEEK, Page 22WORLDUp Against the Border
Ethnic strife in the former Soviet Union threatens to involve
Turkey
Armenians and Azeris have been killing each other in the
disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh at a rate of 500 a year
since 1988. But until recently, the rest of the world saw the
bloodbath in landlocked Karabakh as an internal conflict that
had few if any ramifications beyond Soviet borders.
Not anymore. Last week Armenian fighters cut a six-mile
corridor through Azerbaijan to link Karabakh to the Armenian
republic, then launched an artillery assault on the Azeri
territory of Nakhichevan, which borders Iran and Turkey.
Washington, Moscow and Tehran all strongly condemned the
surprisingly forceful Armenian military moves. And in Ankara the
main opposition party called on the Turkish government to send
troops to Nakhichevan to defend the Azeris, who are ethnic
Turks.
Turkish Prime Minister Suleyman Demirel so far has
resisted pressure to intervene, but the mere suggestion of a
NATO member becoming embroiled in the conflict helped catapult
Karabakh to the top of the agenda at the U.N. and other
international forums. The military commander of the Commonwealth
of Independent States, Yevgeni Shaposhnikov, warned that armed
involvement by foreign nations could transform the Karabakh
conflict into World War III.
Shaposhnikov's fears may be exaggerated, but the utter
failure of the C.I.S. to mediate even a temporary cease-fire in
Karabakh suggests that the Commonwealth may go the way of its
Soviet predecessor. Five of the 11 leaders invited to the most
recent C.I.S. summit meeting failed even to show, and the
leading Azeri presidential candidate last week declared his
intention to withdraw Azerbaijan from the Commonwealth entirely.
Despite the slow unraveling of the C.I.S., there was
welcome news last week on the post-Soviet issue that matters
most to the West: nuclear weapons. After a minisummit in
Washington, President Nursultan Nazarbayev announced that
Kazakhstan would adhere to the START treaty, which slashes
long-range arsenals. In a country where isolated ethnic
conflicts are turning into regional confrontations, nuclear
proliferation is the greatest threat of all.