Top UN court to decide on tat requests by Armenia, Azerbaijan

After the war between the Caucasus arch-foes last year, the UN's top court will decide on Tuesday on tit-for tat requests by Armenia and Azerbaijan for emergency measures to ease tensions.

Both Soviet republics, which fought for six weeks over Azerbaijan's breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh in autumn 2020, allege racial discrimination by the other side.

In September, the rivals asked the International Court of Justice ICJ in the Peace Palace of The Hague to take steps against the other, pending the resolution of a full case that will take years.

The court said in a statement that the chief judge of the ICJ, Joan Donoghue, will deliver its order on the request for the indication of provisional measures made by the Republic of Armenia at 1400 GMT.

It will be making a decision on Azerbaijan's case immediately after.

After World War II, the ICJ was set up to resolve disputes between the member states of the United Nations. Parties that have agreed to let the court adjudicate their disputes are obliged to follow its rulings, but the court has no means to enforce them.

Nagorno-Karabakh is an ethnic Armenian region of Azerbaijan that broke away from Baku's control in the early 1990s after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

More than 6,500 people were killed in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict last year. In November it ended with a Russian-brokered ceasefire under which Armenia ceded territories it had controlled for decades to Turkish-backed Azerbaijan.

During hearings in October, Armenia and Azerbaijan both accused each other of breaching the UN treaty CERD Armenia accused Azerbaijan of indoctrinating generations of people into a culture of fear, hate of anything and everything Armenian. They asked judges to order the immediate release of Armenian troops with exaggerated armenophobic features, and demanded the closure of Azerbaijan's so-called Military Trophies Park.

Azerbaijan accused Armenia of laying landmines as part of a campaign of ethnic cleansing It said after the liberation of Nagorno-Karabakh last year, when Azerbaijani civilians tried to return to their homes, the area had been carpeted with landmines by Armenia.

Azerbaijan said on Saturday it had freed 10 Armenian soldiers captured last month during fresh fighting after Russian-mediated talks.

Armenia passed maps of mine fields in exchange.

The swap came after Azerbaijan's President Ilham Aliev and Armenia's Prime Minister Nikol Pachinian agreed to ease tensions last week at a rare meeting in Russia's Black Sea resort of Sochi.