Nagorno-Karabakh President Inaugurated

YEREVAN, Armenia (AP) - The former security chief of Nagorno-Karabakh was sworn in Friday as the new president of the Armenian-controlled breakaway region.

Bako Saakian, who took 85 percent of the vote in July, headed Nagorno-Karabakh's security service since 2001 until he resigned to run for president.

Saakian pledged to push for full independence of the mountainous territory inside Azerbaijan, which has run its own affairs without international recognition since driving out Azerbaijani forces in the early 1990s.

Azerbaijan has rejected the vote as illegitimate and maintained that Armenian separatists came to power in the former autonomous region as a result of ethnic cleansing.

"The so-called inauguration is nothing but a buffoonery," said Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry spokesman Khazar Ibrahim. "Such actions and their consequences have no legal meaning. Nagorno-Karabakh is an inalienable part of Azerbaijan."

Armenia's President Robert Kocharian and other senior Armenian officials and lawmakers attended the inauguration ceremony in the regional capital, Stepanakert. Delegations from Georgia's breakaway provinces of Abkhazia and South Ossetia also attended.

The July vote was the fourth presidential election in the impoverished territory that has been controlled by Armenian and ethnic Armenian forces since a shaky 1994 cease-fire ended one of the bloodiest conflicts that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union.

The six-year war killed 30,000 people and drove more than 1 million from their homes, including many of the region's ethnic Azeris. Today, it remains one of the region's "frozen" conflicts in the former Soviet states.

Azerbaijan and Armenia remain locked in a dispute over Nagorno-Karabakh despite more than a decade of coaxing from international mediators led by the United States, Russia and France to resolve the region's status.

Speaking at the inauguration, Saakian said Azerbaijan must accept Nagorno-Karabakh representatives at talks.

"We hope that our opponents will sooner or later come to understanding that there is no alternative to talks with full-fledged participation of the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic," Saakian said.

The mostly agricultural region of 146,000 people tied to Armenia by swaths of Azerbaijani territory also under ethnic Armenian control has faced a steady brain drain and dire economic problems despite financial aid from Armenia and its diaspora.

Saakian ran as an independent and replaces Arkady Gukasian, who served two five-year terms.