Armenia ? The former security chief of Nagorno-Karabakh was sworn in Friday as the new president of the Armenian-controlled breakaway region.

Bako Saakian, who took 85 percent of the vote in July, headed Nagorno-Karabakh’s security service since 2001 until he resigned to run for president.

Saakian pledged to push for full independence of the mountainous territory inside Azerbaijan, which has run its own affairs without international recognition since driving out Azerbaijani forces in the early 1990s.

Azerbaijan has rejected the vote as illegitimate and maintained that Armenian separatists came to power in the former autonomous region as a result of ethnic cleansing.