If Caucasus erupts, war could spread: Reuters

Azerbaijan has stepped up threats to take the region back and its decision to give a hero's welcome to a soldier convicted of hacking an Armenian to death on a NATO course has highlighted the risk of a war that could draw in Turkey, Russia and Iran, writes Reuters.
Both it and Azerbaijan have more powerful weapons than two decades ago and if pipelines taking Azeri oil and gas to Europe via Turkey or Armenia's nuclear power station were threatened, war could spread.
Armenia has a collective security agreement with its regional ally Russia, while Azerbaijan has one with Turkey, itself a member of NATO for which an attack on one member state is an attack on all 28.
Thomas de Waal, a Caucasus expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, said a war now would be much more destructive than the low-tech conflict of the 1990s. "It would be much more bloody and become a full state-state conflict with unpredictable consequences."
"We think that if hostilities resume, they could not be limited to a local or regional framework. I think they would have a wider geographical spread," said the president of Nagorno-Karabakh Bako Sahakyan.
Note, that the efforts of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe in regard with this, have had little success.
"Nagorno-Karabakh is an integral part of Armenia. We will do everything to save our land.” said Archbishop Pargev Martirosyan.