Armenia and Azerbaijan: Yerevan and Baku Send Khojaly Letters to Ban Ki-Moon

Both Armenia and Azerbaijan have sent letters to United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon, both of which blame the other side for the 1992 Khojaly massacre in disputed Nagorno-Karabakh.

The massacre, one of the most controversial moments in the 22-year dispute between the two countries over the territory, occurred on February 25-26, 1992, as Armenian forces moved to seize control of the ethnic Azeri village of Khojaly. Each side blames the other for the hundreds of civilian deaths.

In excerpts from a February 24 letter to the UN secretary-general, quoted by Azerbaijan's state-run APA news agency, Baku's ambassador to the United Nations, Agshin Mekhdiev, lambasted Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan, who was at the time in charge of separatist Karabakh's military troops, for his role in what Baku describes as an ethnic cleansing operation.

On the same day, Mekhdiev's Armenian counterpart, Ambassador Karen Nazarian, also wrote Ban, denying Armenia's role in the 1992 slayings, and blaming Azerbaijan for the tragedy, the RIA-Novosti news agency reported.

Since the imposition of a ceasefire in 1994, Baku and Yerevan have waged an international war of words about who is the victim and who is the aggressor in their six-year war over Karabakh.