Here’s an interesting side note regarding the current fighting along the Artsakh Line of Contact.

It seems that Ali Hasanov, a senior adviser to Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev, told The Jerusalem Post yesterday that Azerbaijan wants Israel to weigh in on the conflict.

According to the newspaper, Hasanov, in a telephone interview said:

“What we expect from Israel, which we respect a great deal, is to relate to what is happening here because Israel can request Armenia to stop the fire and enter negotiations.”

When The Jerusalem Post interviewer reminded Hasanov that Israel has little leverage over Armenia, Hasanov – speaking through a translator – said that Israel has good relations with the United States, Russia and France and can “urge them to bring the Armenians to negotiations over the disputed territory.”

The U.S., Russia and France are co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group which has been the international body trying to resolve the conflict for the past several years.

The Jerusalem Post writes that Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Emmanuel Nachshon said the ministry “is following the developments in NagornoKarabakh and in the Azeri-Armenian relations with great interest,” but that, “for the moment,” it was not commenting on the issue.

The article goes on to say that while in Washington D.C. last week, Aliyev met with a delegation of Jewish leaders from AIPAC, the National Coalition Supporting Eurasian Jewry, and the Conference of presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, and discussed Baku’s ties with the U.S. and Israel.