THE HAGUE, Dec 7, 2021 (BSS/AFP) - The UN's top court will decide on
Tuesday on tit-for-tat requests by Armenia and Azerbaijan for emergency
measures to ease tensions after last year's war between the Caucasus arch-
foes.

  The former Soviet republics, which battled for six weeks in autumn 2020
over Azerbaijan's breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh, both allege racial
discrimination by the other side.

  In September, the rivals each asked the International Court of Justice
(ICJ) located in the Peace Palace of The Hague to take steps against the
other, pending the resolution of a full case that will take years.

  The ICJ's chief judge Joan Donoghue "will deliver its order on the request
for the indication of provisional measures made by the Republic of Armenia"
at 1400 GMT, the court said in a statement.

  Its ruling on Azerbaijan's case will follow immediately afterwards.

  The ICJ was set up after World War II to resolve disputes between United
Nations member states. Parties that have agreed to let the court adjudicate
their disputes are obliged to follow its rulings, but the court has no means
to enforce them.

  Nagorno-Karabakh is an ethnic Armenian region of Azerbaijan that broke away
from Baku's control in the early 1990s after the collapse of the Soviet
Union.

  The Nagorno-Karabakh conflict last year claimed more than 6,500 lives. It
ended in November with a Russian-brokered ceasefire under which Armenia ceded
territories it had controlled for decades to Turkish-backed Azerbaijan.

  - 'Cycle of hate' -

  During hearings in October Armenia and Azerbaijan both accused the other of
breaching a UN treaty, the International Convention on All Forms of Racial
Discrimination (CERD).

  Armenia accused Azerbaijan of fuelling a "cycle of hate" by indoctrinating
generations of people into a "culture of fear, of hate of anything and
everything Armenian".

  They asked judges to order the immediate release of Armenian prisoners of
war and demanded the closure of Azerbaijan's so-called Military Trophies
Park, where they say wax mannequins of Armenian troops with "exaggerated
Armenophobic features" are displayed.

  Azerbaijan meanwhile accused Armenia of laying landmines as part of a
campaign of "ethnic cleansing".

  It said that after the "liberation" of Nagorno-Karabakh last year, when
Azerbaijani civilians tried to return to their homes they found the area had
been "carpeted" with landmines by Armenia.

  Azerbaijan said on Saturday it had freed 10 Armenian soldiers captured last
month during fresh fighting, following Russian-mediated talks.

  Armenia in exchange passed on maps of mine fields.

  The swap came after Azerbaijan's President Ilham Aliev and Armenia's Prime
Minister Nikol Pachinian agreed to ease tensions last week at a rare meeting
in Russia's Black Sea resort of Sochi.