Turkey To Send Soldiers For Karabakh 'Peacekeeping Centre'
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan asked
parliament Monday to authorise sending soldiers to Azerbaijan to establish a
"peacekeeping centre" with Russia to monitor a truce over the
disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region.
Erdogan's request followed two days of talks in
Ankara with Russian officials about how the two regional powers intend to
jointly implement a Russian-brokered ceasefire signed last week.
Turkey is one of Azerbaijan's closest allies and has
strongly defended its right to reclaim lands it lost to ethnic Armenian
separatists in a 1988-94 war.
The Russia-brokered deal brought an end to more than
six weeks of fighting that claimed more than 1,400 lives and saw ethnic
Armenians to agree to withdraw from large parts of the contested region of
Azerbaijan.
Erdogan asked parliament Monday to deploy a mission
to "establish a joint centre with Russia and to carry out the centre's
activities".
The deployment would be active for one year and its
size determined by Erdogan.
Russia is sending 1,960 peacekeepers as well as
armoured personnel carriers and other military equipment to monitor the truce
deal.
Moscow has stressed repeatedly that Turkey will have
no troops on the ground under the truce deal's terms.
The Russian-brokered agreement states that a
"peacekeeping centre is being deployed to control the ceasefire" but
does not specify its formal role.
