AP
The leader of Nagorno-Karabakh on Friday ordered a constitutional referendum to be held next month.President Arkady Ghukasian set the referendum for December 10, his office said. The draft constitution says that the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic, also called the Republic of Artsakh, is a sovereign democratic nation.
Nagorno-Karabakh is a region in Azerbaijan that has been under the control of Armenian and ethnic-Armenian Karabakh forces since a 1994 cease-fire ended a six-year separatist war that killed about 30,000 people and drove about 1 million from their homes. The region's final status has not been worked out, and years of talks under the auspices of international mediators have brought few visible results.
(Photolur photo: Arkady Ghukasian.)