Azerbaijan urges ICJ to discard Armenia's 'premature' lawsuit

Azerbaijan and Armenia have again locked horns before the UN's top court, with Baku slamming Yerevan for misusing the high-profile hearings to wage a "public media campaign" against its archrival.

Lawyers and representatives from the two countries embarked on two weeks of hearings on Monday, wrestling over interpretations of international law in the gilded Peace Palace of the International Court of Justice in The Hague.

Military tensions are again ramping up between the neighbours following the conflict in the mountainous area of Karabakh.

Azerbaijan's representative Elnur Mammadov told judges Armenia's lawsuit was "premature" and urged the court to throw out the case.

"That is because Armenia failed to engage in negotiations with Azerbaijan in an attempt to settle" the dispute, he said.

There were "limited negotiations" but Yerevan "failed to pursue them," Mammadov said.

"From the outset Armenia had it sights firmly set on commencing these proceedings before the court... and using the fact of these proceedings to wage a public media campaign against Azerbaijan," Mammadov said.

Lawsuits and counter lawsuits

The legal battle before the ICJ dates from September 2021 when each side filed tit-for-tat suits against each other within a week.

They accused each other of "ethnic cleansing" and of violating the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD).

The ICJ, which rules in disputes between states, issued emergency orders in December 2021, calling on both parties to prevent incitement and promotion of racial hatred.

But while the ICJ's orders are binding, it has no enforcement mechanism and tensions grew, culminating in Azerbaijan's anti-terror military operation last September in Karabakh.

Baku reclaimed Karabakh in the one-day offensive. More than 100,000 people have reportedly fled to Armenia during that operation.

Weeks later, Armenia returned to the ICJ, urging the court to order Azerbaijan to withdraw its troops from Karabakh and allow Armenians to return to the region.

In November, the court ordered Azerbaijan to allow anyone wishing to return to Karabakh to do so in a "safe, unimpeded and expeditious manner".

The latest hearings will run until April 26, largely concerning objections raised by both parties to each other's original cases filed in September 2021.

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev have said, however, that a comprehensive peace agreement is within reach after last year's offensive in Karabakh.

The former Soviet republics have fought two wars for control of the mountainous region -- most recently in 2020 and in the early 1990s amid the break-up of the Soviet Union -- that have claimed thousands of lives on both sides and caused hundreds of thousands to flee.