Armenia and Azerbaijan clash over plight of 120,000 people in Nagorno-Karabakh facing food crisis

By EDITH M. LEDERER
Associated Press

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — Armenia and Azerbaijan clashed at an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council over the plight of the 120,000 people in the Nagorno-Karabakh region that Armenia says are blockaded by Azerbaijan and facing a humanitarian crisis. Armenia sought Wednesday’s council meeting saying Azerbaijan’s blockade of the Lachin Corridor, the only road connecting mainly Armenian-populated Nagorno-Karabakh to Armenia since July 15, had left its people with dwindling food, medicine and electricity. Nagorno-Karabakh is part of Azerbaijan, but the region and substantial territory around it came under control of ethnic Armenian forces in 1994. Azerbaijan’s U.N. Ambassador Yashar Aliyev called Armenia’s allegations of a blockade and humanitarian crisis  “unfounded and groundless.”