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Azerbaijan said on Monday that the World Court ordered neighboring Armenia to hand over maps it says show the location of landmines on its territory, while the judges consider claims that the other side violated an anti-discrimination treaty.
This time last year, Azeri troops drove ethnic Armenian forces out of swathes of territory they had controlled in and around the Nagorno-Karabakh region for two centuries before Russia brokered a ceasefire.
Azeri Deputy Foreign Minister Elnur Mammadov told Judges that the emergency measures sought were urgently needed to protect against the dire threat posed by what it says is Armenia's refusal to hand over the maps.
The alleged campaign of placing landmines is quite simply a continuation of Azerbaijan's decades-long ethnic cleansing operation and an attempt to keep these territories cleansed of Armenian Mammadov said.
Azerbijan is reacting to Armenia's claim about landmines later in Monday's hearing.
Last week, Armenia sought emergency measures from the World Court. Lawyers for Armenia told judges then that Azerbaijan promoted ethnic hatred against Armenians.
Armenia rejected Armenia's claim and said that it was the other way around and that it was Armenia that carried out ethnic cleansing. The requests for emergency measures are part of case records filed in the World Court last month where both Armenia and Azerbaijan claimed that the other country has violated the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, to which both states are signators.
The hearings on Monday and last week do not go into the merits of the cases but instead deal with requests from both sides for emergency measures while the court considers the claims. The International Court of Justice, formally known as the World Court of Justice, is the International Court of Justice for resolving disputes between countries. It has yet to determine whether it has jurisdiction in this case.