Armen Karo Student Assoctiation

AFP - Four Armenian soldiers have been killed in fighting in Azerbaijan's breakaway region of Nagorny Karabakh, Armenia's defence ministry said Saturday.

"Four soldiers of the Karabakh Defence Army were killed and four wounded on Friday as a result of fighting with an Azerbaijani armed reconnaissance group," the ministry said in a statement.

The statement claimed that an Azerbaijani soldier had also been killed in the fighting. Azerbaijani authorities could not immediately be reached for comment.

The statement said an armed group of Azerbaijani soldiers entered the rebel region late Friday night and then retreated into Azerbaijani-controlled territory after the fighting.

Armenian Foreign Minister Eduard Nalbandian condemned the incident as "an open provocation" aimed at disrupting negotiations over the rebel region.

"Clearly it was a pre-planned action, which shows once again the true face of Baku, which is doing its utmost to disrupt the negotiating process," Nalbandian told AFP.

He noted that the incident occurred immediately after a meeting Thursday in Saint Petersburg between Armenian President Serzh Sarkisian, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev.

Nalbandian said Baku was trying to "disrupt the negotiations using provocative statements and threat of war."

Tensions over Karabakh have risen in recent months amid stalled negotiations over the status of the region, where ethnic Armenian separatists backed by Yerevan seized control from Baku in a war in the early 1990s that claimed an estimated 30,000 lives.

Aliyev earlier this month threatened to withdraw from foreign-backed peace talks after he accused Armenia of stalling the negotiations.

Armenian and Azerbaijani forces are spread across a ceasefire line in and around Nagorny Karabakh, often facing each other at close range, and shootings are common.

Azerbaijan's defence ministry said Friday that an Azerbaijani soldier had been killed in fighting with Armenian forces near Karabakh on Wednesday.

Baku has repeatedly warned that it is prepared to restore Azerbaijani control over Karabakh by force.

On Friday Azerbaijan's parliament approved a revised 2010 state budget boosting defence spending by a third, as it pursues an arms build-up that has seen it nearly double defence spending in the last two years.