Armenia's Communist Party chief has threatened to quit the Soviet Politburo unless President Mikhail S. Gorbachev can restore order in the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh, news reports said Wednesday. Meanwhile, the Armenian parliament passed a resolution complaining that citizens of the predominantly Armenian territory located inside the neighboring republic of Azerbaijan are having their rights trampled upon, the Tass news agency reported. ``The Armenian population of Nagorno-Karabakh continues to be subject to terror on the part of Azerbaijani authorities, assisted by units of the Soviet army and Interior Ministry troops,'' Tass quoted the resolution as saying. A state of emergency is in effect in the mountainous region, part of Azerbaijan since 1923. Ethnic battles between residents of the two Caucasus republics over who should control the area have left more than 200 people dead the past two years. Vladimir Movsisyan, the Communist Party leader of Armenia, said in an appeal published in the republic's newspapers Wednesday that indifference and indecision on the part of the Soviet leadership have given Azerbaijan's leaders ``a free hand to pursue an anti-Armenian policy,'' according to the independent Interfax news service. It quoted him as saying misinformation circulated about Armenians' ``aggressive activity'' in Azerbaijan has put the two republics on the verge of war. Movsisyan, who as the republic's Communist Party leader is a member of the Soviet Politburo, threatened to resign unless the Nagorno-Karabakh issue is solved as soon as possible so that Armenian lives in the region are protected, Tass and Interfax reported. The president of Azerbaijan, Ayaz Mutalibov, also has accused the Soviet authorities of inaction in the dispute, and he has issued a different kind of threat _ that his republic may secede from the Soviet Union if the Kremlin does not act to ``normalize the situation'' in Nagorno-Karabakh. Mutalibov made the threat in an interview published Tuesday in the newspaper Sovietskaya Rossiya. Movsisyan said a natural gas pipeline to Yerevan, Armenia's capital, has been shut off, and freight trains have stopped arriving in the city of Idzhevan, costing the republic tens of millions of rubles. In addition, Azerbaijani authorities are forcing Armenians to leave their homes in Nagorno-Karabakh, in order to change the demography of the region, the Armenian parliament's resolution was quoted by Tass as saying. The parliament urged that Interior Ministry and Soviet army troops be deployed immediately along the borders of Nagorno-Karabakh and adjacent areas to restore Soviet authority and self-government in the area, Tass reported. Last week, the Armenian parliament banned the Armenian National Army, created last winter as a vigilante group to protect the mostly Christian population of Armenia from the mostly Moslem population of Azerbaijan. Lawmakers acted after the militant nationalist group was blamed for the shooting deaths of a member of parliament and another man. Gorbachev has demanded that militants in the republic disarm and disband paramilitary groups, but Armenian leaders say they can police their own population.
