YEREVAN, APRIL 25, ARMENPRESS.  President of Armenia Serzh Sargsyan gave an interview to Bloomberg over the recent eruption of violence in Nagorno Karabakh conflict zone.

War can break out “at any moment” in the Caucasus flashpoint of Nagorno-Karabakh and there’s little prospect of talks to resolve the conflict, "Armenpress" reports the president of Armenia said.

A Russian-brokered truce may not be enough to prevent fighting “on an even larger scale” after four days of war between Azeris and Armenians this month that involved “several hundred tanks” and 30,000 artillery rounds, Serzh Sargsyan said in an interview Saturday at the presidential residence in the Armenian capital, Yerevan.

It’s “unreasonable” for Armenia to resume peace talks with Azerbaijan over the disputed territory without security guarantees because “the situation is entirely different now,” he said. “On the one hand we’d be talking somewhere while, on the other, military officials would be engaging in war here to try to settle the conflict,” he said.

The clashes in early April were the worst since a cease-fire 22 years ago halted a war that claimed 30,000 lives and created 1 million refugees, and ended with the victory of Armenia. International mediators have failed to negotiate a lasting peace since then in a conflict that threatens to destabilize a region flanked by Russia, Turkey and Iran, while also potentially disrupting a new energy corridor between central Asia and Europe.

Azerbaijan, the former Soviet Union’s third largest oil producer, has attracted more than $50 billion from BP Plc and its partners in recent years. BP’s oil pipeline which carried 720,000 barrels per day from Baku to the Mediterranean last year runs fewer than 30 miles from the conflict zone at one point.

Amid intense international diplomacy to avert war, Sargsyan met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in Yerevan on Friday.

Lavrov didn’t “bring any new proposals” because “he realizes very well that it doesn’t make sense to talk about negotiations immediately after a four-day war,” Sargsyan said. Battles raged along the full 200-kilometer (124 miles) length of the front line as Azerbaijan tried to punch through to Nagorno-Karabakh itself and then “issue an ultimatum” to the Armenian-held enclave, he said, adding that the Armenian side had no precise information what would happen on April 1. “If we had such information, Azerbaijanis would bear much more losses and the few meters that remained under their control would not happen”.

Sargsyan, 61, stated that Azeri troops took “very small pieces” of land in the north and south of the contact line that “had no strategic importance” for Armenian forces, who didn’t try to reclaim them “to avoid additional losses” of life, Sargsyan said.

“Azerbaijani subversive units started to work by 3 o’clock at night by our time. As it turned out the next day, or better to say some hours later, the subversive units had infiltrated into our back and were approaching Talish village where they encountered our patrol groups and clashes erupted. From now on, the Azerbaijanis started the onslaught along the front line. This is what had happened. Our northern units were unable to entirely turn to defense on the first day of the clashes. Only imagine what kind of shelling was going on in that small area which was directed not only at the front line units but also the place of permanent stationing of troops and civilian population and there was a necessity to shelter those people. A few hours later, at around 6:30 similar attacks started along the entire contact line with the application of a great number of tanks, artillery, UAVs, helicopters, but the Defense Army had already managed to turn into defense as a result of which Azerbaijanis could not progress in any place”, President Sargsyan said.

“I do not take these 4 days a ceasefire violation. I assess this as a 4-day war, because a ceasefire violation can be considered such a situation when one or a number of shootings are heard and when the weapons previously used, are applied. But during these 4 days very large and destructive weapons were used, such as “Smerch”, “TOS”, Israeli UAVs, and Turkish made large caliber weapons, and all types of artillery, even 152 mm. Who can speak about ceasefire violation if 100s of tanks were participating in the operation?” President Sargsyan said, adding that the military operations were stopped after the Russian Chief of General Staff called his Armenian counterpart and told that Azerbaijanis are ready to stop firing. The Chief of General Staff of the Armed Forces of Armenia left for Moscow where a meeting took place between the Armenian, Russian and Azerbaijani Chiefs of General Staffs, where a verbal agreement was reached to stop firing. Serzh Sargsyan stated “stop firing” but not “establish ceasefire regime” as, in his words, the ceasefire regime had been established back in 1994 and was reinforced with another document in 1995. “But the troops have not withdrawn, artillery and tanks remain on the frontline, and at any moment the same can reoccur, maybe in a larger scale”, the Armenian President said.

While the chief of the defense staff in Moscow mediated the cease-fire talks, there’s no place for Russian peacekeepers in the conflict zone to separate the two sides, Sargsyan said. Talk of deploying Russian forces “wasn’t entirely without grounds” in previous peace negotiations, though “I don’t see any such opportunity” now, he said.

“If there are no negotiations, how can Russian forces appear in Karabakh or between Azerbaijani and Karabakh forces?” Sargsyan said. Russia’s pursuing a “balanced policy” between Armenia and Azerbaijan while seeking to avert “large-scale military conflict,” he said.

The Nagorno-Karabakh situation is “very fragile,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on a conference call Monday.

Armenia has a mutual-defense pact with Russia and hosts its ally’s only military base in the region, though Armenians protested this month outside the Russian embassy in Yerevan over weapons sales to Azerbaijan. Russia will continue selling weapons to Armenia and Azerbaijan as they’re both “our strategic partners,” Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin said, the Tass news service reported April 8.

Flush with cash before oil prices collapsed, Azerbaijan boosted military spending 10-fold over the last decade to as much as $4.8 billion last year, more than Armenia’s entire state budget. Armenia’s defense budget rose threefold over the same period to $447 million, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.

Sargysan said Russian, U.S. and French mediators from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe must put in place “confidence-building measures” before any new peace talks, and particularly “an investigation mechanism for violations of the cease-fire that would pinpoint exactly which party” was responsible. Armenia also requires “assurances that these kinds of violations will not happen again,” he said.

The president disclosed that he’d been willing to withdraw Armenian forces from five districts and allow in peacekeepers as part of 2011 negotiations with Aliyev in the Russian city of Kazan. The Russian, U.S. and French presidents urged both leaders to sign the agreement, which would also have postponed a final decision on Nagorno-Karabakh’s status, but Aliyev refused, Sargsyan said.

 “That was the time when Azerbaijan was enriching itself with oil money and talking about the size of its military budget,” Sargsyan said of the failed 2011 talks. “What took place now should have been expected.”