Azerbaijan?s breakaway Nagorno-Karabakh region voted yesterday in a re-ferendum which its leader said would signal its commitment to independence. Nagorno-Karabakh split from Azerbaijan in a 1990s war that killed 35,000 people. The conflict is still unresolved, fuelling instability in a part of the world that is emerging as a major energy supplier. Voters in Nagorno-Karabakh, a territory about half the size of the Mediterranean island of Cyprus, are being asked to approve their region?s first constitution. It includes a line that Nagorno-Karabakh is a sovereign state ? though that has never been recognised internationally.

Voting was being held on the 15th anniversary of a referendum in which Karabakh declared independence. The referendum is almost certain to pass since a majority of people in Nagorno-Karabakh are Christian ethnic Armenians who associate themselves with neighbouring Armenia rather than Azerbaijan, a majority Muslim state.