Up Against the Border

ARMENIANS AND AZERIS HAVE BEEN KILLING EACH other in the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh at a rate of 500 a year since 1988. But until recently, the rest of the world saw the bloodbath in landlocked Karabakh as an internal conflict that had few if any ramifications beyond Soviet borders.

Not anymore. Last week Armenian fighters cut a six-mile corridor through Azerbaijan to link Karabakh to the Armenian republic, then launched an artillery assault on the Azeri territory of Nakhichevan, which borders Iran and Turkey. Washington, Moscow and Tehran all strongly condemned the surprisingly forceful Armenian military moves. And in Ankara the main opposition party called on the Turkish government to send troops to Nakhichevan to defend the Azeris, who are ethnic Turks.

Turkish Prime Minister Suleyman Demirel so far has resisted pressure to intervene, but the mere suggestion of a NATO member becoming embroiled in the conflict helped catapult Karabakh to the top of the agenda at the U.N. and other international forums. The military commander of the Commonwealth of Independent States, Yevgeni Shaposhnikov, warned that armed involvement by foreign nations could transform the Karabakh conflict into World War III.

Shaposhnikov's fears may be exaggerated, but the utter failure of the C.I.S. to mediate even a temporary cease-fire in Karabakh suggests that the Commonwealth may go the way of its Soviet predecessor. Five of the 11 leaders invited to the most recent C.I.S. summit meeting failed even to show, and the leading Azeri presidential candidate last week declared his intention to withdraw Azerbaijan from the Commonwealth entirely.

Despite the slow unraveling of the C.I.S., there was welcome news last week on the post-Soviet issue that matters most to the West: nuclear weapons. After a minisummit in Washington, President Nursultan Nazarbayev announced that Kazakhstan would adhere to the START treaty, which slashes long-range arsenals. In a country where isolated ethnic conflicts are turning into regional confrontations, nuclear proliferation is the greatest threat of all.