9 Nations Meet on Armenian Drive : Caucasus: Troop pullout sought at Moscow talks. There are warnings that neighboring countries could be drawn into Karabakh conflict.

MOSCOW â€”  Representatives of nine nations began talks here Thursday in the latest attempt to resolve the ethnic war on Russia’s southern border between Azerbaijan and Armenia as political leaders in the region stepped up warnings that the conflict could escalate into a full-scale international war.

The Minsk Group of the Council on Security and Cooperation in Europe--which consists of Russia, the United States and seven European countries--opened talks with delegations from both warring parties to try to persuade Armenia to withdraw troops from recently seized Azerbaijani territory.

The advance by ethnic Armenian forces began months ago from the enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh, which is encircled by Azerbaijan but had a majority Armenian population.

Armenian troops have taken advantage of disarray in the opposing army to overrun Azerbaijani settlements and now occupy 20% of Azerbaijan, official Azerbaijani sources report. The advance has sharply increased political tensions among neighboring countries, with Turkey, Iran and Russia condemning the taking of Azerbaijani territory and insisting that Armenian troops withdraw.

In the last several days, Turkey has threatened to declare war on Armenia if it continues to advance into Azerbaijani territory. Iran has complained about an influx of more than 100,000 Azerbaijani refugees across its border.

Tehran, according to some reports, sent troops across the Azerbaijani border to restrict the flow and possibly to protect the Nakhichevan dam, keystone of a reservoir that supplies water to Azerbaijan and Iran.

For their part, Armenian authorities have said they do not intend to hold Azerbaijani territory. Armenian government officials told Iranian and American leaders Thursday that Armenian troops would stop attacks on Azerbaijan and “gradually� withdraw in accord with U.N. Security Council resolutions passed last spring.

But the statements did not stanch concern in the region that the 5-year-old war is on the verge of drawing in neighbors.

“The situation has reached a very dangerous point and there is a real danger of the internationalization of the conflict,� Geidar Aliyev, the acting Azerbaijani president, said this week after three days of talks in Moscow with Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin and other top Russian leaders.

The Azerbaijani-Armenian war is, perhaps, the most dangerous that has erupted on the southern rim of the former Soviet Union because neighboring countries fear their national interests are jeopardized. Iran, Turkey and Russia are jockeying for political and economic influence in an oil-rich region over which each has exercised authority at some time.

The delicacy of negotiating a path among the often irreconcilable interests of those three countries was illustrated by Aliyev’s visit this week to Moscow.

Ending the war is seen as a key to his maintaining power in Azerbaijan. Aliyev, the former Communist Party and KGB chief under the Soviet regime, returned to political power in June, just as democratically elected President Abulfez Elchibey was toppling under pressure of military defeat.

Elchibey fled the capital and last month lost a public confidence vote. That left Aliyev, chairman of the Parliament, as acting president, and, thus far, the only declared candidate in upcoming presidential elections.

Aliyev said this week that since assuming power in Baku he has been “constantly in touch . . . personally� with Armenian President Levon Ter-Petrosyan, communication that he called “essential for a peace settlement.�

But Aliyev also did not shrink from calling Armenia the “aggressors� in the war. Aliyev noted that a cease-fire negotiated this summer by the Council on Security and Cooperation in Europe has been repeatedly violated. That cease-fire is due to expire today.

Armenia, in turn, blames Azerbaijan for starting the war by blockading Nagorno-Karabakh.

Times staff writer Sonni Efron in Baku, Azerbaijan, and Sergei Loiko of The Times’ Moscow Bureau contributed to this report.