Azernews.Az

YEREVAN – The commander of Armenian-backed forces in the occupied Azerbaijani region of Nagorno Karabakh has said his military acquired significant amounts of new weapons this year and will continue its buildup, Radio Liberty's Armenian Service reports.

Lieutenant-General Movses Hakobian estimated that the "military potential" of his troops grew by 20 percent in the first half of 2011.

"During this period, the qualitative and quantitative state of our weapons and military hardware changed quite a lot," Hakobian told a news conference last Friday in Stepanakert (Khankandi), the center of the self-proclaimed republic run by ethnic Armenians in Nagorno Karabakh. "Quite serious reforms were carried out with the restructuring of two army brigades."

He added: "We rearmed one artillery regiment with new systems. The antitank and air defense means of a dozen battalions have been enhanced. And this year we will receive more tanks -- two more divisions -- and some of the weaponry of the army's air-defense system will be replaced."

Hakobian, who commanded some separatist Karabakh units during Armenia’s war with Azerbaijan in the early 1990s, gave no other details of the buildup.

Armenia's Karabakh-born defense minister, Seyran Ohanian, said in February that Yerevan obtained "unprecedented" quantities of modern weaponry in 2010. "The expansion of our military capacity will continue in 2011, and it will be no less large-scale than it was in 2010," he told Radio Liberty.

Armenian armed forces have occupied over 20 percent of Azerbaijan's territory since the Karabakh war. Azerbaijani leaders have repeatedly warned that Karabakh and other Armenian-controlled territories surrounding the region would be taken back by force if the long-running Armenian-Azerbaijani peace talks yield no results. The Azerbaijani government plans to boost military spending to $3.3 billion this year, up from $2.1 billion a year ago and just $160 million in 2003.