In this post on Monday about the unrest in Armenia, I wrote:

Any discussion of Armenia will eventually turn to Azerbaijan and Nagorno-Karabakh, and serious unrest in Armenia would certainly spark speculation of renewed conflict over that region.

Well, today there is this news:

Ethnic Armenian and Azerbaijani forces exchanged fire for hours Tuesday near the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh, officials said.

The region is inside Azerbaijan but has been under ethnic Armenian control since a 1994 cease-fire ended a six-year war.

A spokesman for Nagorno-Karabakh’s military force said eight Azerbaijani soldiers were killed; Azerbaijani officials declined to comment on casualties. A local news report said three Azerbaijani soldiers were killed.

The clashes came as Azerbaijan’s president, Ilham Aliyev, issued his latest suggestion that his country could use force to regain control over Nagorno-Karabakh.

PanArmenian reports,

“Azerbaijan’s making use of Armenian internal tensions was incorrect. Maybe they thought that we have lost vigilance. Maybe they thought that NKR forces have been sent to Yerevan,” the President [Kocharian] said, adding the sides have already reached agreement on ceasefire.

According to him, the Azeri side used artillery at first line. The attack was rebuffed and status quo restored. One Armenian officer was injured in arm and one soldier suffered from antipersonnel mine, IA Regnum reported.

And, from the APA,

Baku. Rashad Suleymanov – APA.“Clashes in the frontline on March 4 and Azerbaijani Army heroically fitting shows that enemy cannot prevail over our army. Azerbaijani Armed Forces’ battle readiness is at high level.

Many Armenian soldiers were killed and wounded and it caused the new clashes in the country,” Lieutenant Colonel Eldar Sabiroghlu, Press Secretary of Azerbaijan’s Ministry of Defense said APA reports.
He stated that Armenia was engaged in giving disinformation at present.
“Armenia is trying to divert the attention of its citizens and the world community from the internal and domestic unrest and bloody actions in Yerevan. But they have not achieved any result,” he said.
Sabiroglu noted that one of the aims of Armenians in the violation of cease-fire was to blame Azerbaijan for this issue again.
“But international community is aware of last trick of Armenians. Hypocritical mask of Armenians was torn. Whole world knows that Armenia is an aggressor,” he said.
Sabiroglu added that Armenian Mass Media provided false information to cover up real number of Armenia’s losses.
“This is not first time. They are engaged in concealing real losses every time. The enemy should previously count losses before attacking, because attackers have many losses,” he said.

Also,

Azerbaijani foreign minister Elmar Mamedyarov has reacted to the violation of ceasefire regime by the Armenian Armed Forces in the frontline on March 4.

E. Mamedyarov told APA that Armenian intensive violation of ceasefire related to the intensions of Armenian leadership to take attention off the strain situation inside the country. “They aim to conceal exertion in Armenia. All democratic norms have been violated in this country, newspapers have been banned and state of emergency has been declared. Indeed Armenian authority is trying to distract attention from the internal issues falling back on diversion to create view as if Azerbaijan attacked them”.

RFE/RL adds this today,

Today, as an opposition leader, Ter-Petrossian is the most outspoken critic of what he and his allies call the “Karabakh clan,” lambasting his former proteges for raiding the country’s treasury, strangling the economy, and stifling democracy.

The main targets of the broadside have been outgoing President Robert Kocharian and his preferred successor, Serzh Sarkisian, the current prime minister who defeated Ter-Petrossian in Armenia’s February 19 presidential election. Both Kocharian and Sarkisian hail from Nagorno-Karabakh, an Armenian-controlled and populated enclave within Azerbaijan over which Baku and Yerevan fought a war in 1988-94.
….
Critics allege that Karabakh Armenians have benefited from government favoritism and that Kocharian and Sarkisian have dragged their feet on formally ending the conflict to advance their cronies’ business interests.

Yerevan-based political analyst Stepan Grigorian, who is sympathetic to Ter-Petrossian and the opposition, says having a president from Nagorno-Karabakh “who governs Armenia very badly” has fueled resentment.
….
Armenia had control of Karabakh when a cease-fire was reached in 1994. But the victory came with a price, as Armenia’s borders with Azerbaijan and Turkey have remained sealed.

Ter-Petrossian, who became Armenia’s first post-independence president in 1991, brought Sarkisian — who was a senior military official in Nagorno-Karabakh — to Yerevan in 1993 to serve as defense minister. In 1998, he named Kocharian, who served as chairman of Nagorno-Karabakh’s State Defense Committee and later as president, Armenia’s prime minister.

It was a decision Ter-Petrossian soon regretted. He proposed a compromise solution to Azerbaijan on Nagorno-Karabakh that Kocharian staunchly opposed. Ter-Petrossian was forced to resign over the issue in February 1998 and Kocharian won a special election to succeed him. Under Kocharian, Sarkisian served in a number of posts including defense minister, interior minister, national-security minister, presidential chief of staff, and most recently, prime minister.

Aram Abramian, editor in chief of the Yerevan-based daily newspaper “Aravot” and who has roots in Nagorno-Karabakh, says Kocharian and Sarkisian brought in associates from the territory who took over state posts and dominated the business elite.

“There are 20, 30 families — oligarchs — people who, thanks to the opportunities that are provided to them by the authorities, became rich, and have wide possibilities of avoiding taxes and custom fees,” Abramian says, adding that well-connected moguls were able to gain “monopolies” over fuel, sugar, and other commodities.

“Others, who are less powerful, do not have this right,” Abramian adds. “Not all of these people are from Karabakh. It does not matter where they come from — the most important thing is for them to serve the authorities.”

Among those identified by analysts as part of the Karabakh clan are Kocharian’s son, Sedrak, who reportedly controls mobile-phone imports; Barsegh Beglarian, who dominates the gas-station market; Mika Bagdasarov, who controls oil imports and heads the national airline; and Karen Karapetian, head of the Armrusgazard gas company, a joint venture with Russia’s Gazprom.

Abramian and other analysts say these oligarchs benefit from the lack of a final resolution to the Karabakh conflict and the closed borders with Turkey and Azerbaijan.

“This is one of the reasons why these issues are not being solved, because to have open borders with Europe, Asia, and so on — in [that] case, the flows of goods, in either direction, will be wider, and it will be more difficult to control them,” Abramian says. “Now, however, when one narrow flow comes through Georgia and another, even narrower, comes via Iran, controlling these flows of goods is much easier.”

Observers say such arrangements also stifle local production, hinder small business development, and ultimately harm the country’s economy. And that is a major reason why one of Ter-Petrossian’s main bases of support is among small and mid-level entrepreneurs.