A band of Azerbaijanis lashes out at Moscow's men

It could have been a scene from a revolution: three of the Soviet Union's most powerful generals and their armed escort, clad in brown battle dress, held hostage by a ring of demonstrators. At the center of the tumult was Colonel General Yuri Shatalin, commander of the Soviet Interior Ministry's security forces, flanked by Major General Vladislav Safonov, head of the 4,500 troops trying to keep peace in the disputed mountain enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh, and a third senior general. A hundred angry Azerbaijani protesters, many of them refugees from Armenian areas, had stormed into a conference room in the town of Shusha where the officers were meeting local officials and refused to let them leave. The generals decided that pointing their weapons would only inflame the mob and chose to talk it out. The officers were held for five hours and were released only after they agreed to transfer two Azerbaijanis accused of sniping at Armenians to a prison in Shusha.

The episode, which took place two weeks ago, has yet to be mentioned in the Soviet press. The New York Times reported last Friday that it had confirmed the details by telephone with officials in the district. More than 100 people have died in Nagorno-Karabakh since ethnic strife erupted there in early 1988. And there is no end in sight: the Defense Ministry daily Krasnaya Zvezda reported last week that the Armenian and Azerbaijani communities were "on the brink of civil war" and troops stationed in the region can no longer control the violent strikes and demonstrations that occur almost daily.