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Azeris deny NATO conf venue changed over Armenian officer's killing

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  • Azeris deny NATO conf venue changed over Armenian officer's killing

    Azeris deny NATO conference venue changed over Armenian officer's killing

    Ekspress, Baku
    12 Mar 04

    The venue for the second planning conference of the Cooperative Best
    Effort - 2004 military exercises, which will be held in Azerbaijan
    within the framework of NATO's Partnership for Peace programme this
    September, has been changed. The NATO headquarters said in a press
    release yesterday that officers from partner countries would meet in
    Kiev this time. The NATO leadership links this change to "technical
    issues". We should remind you that the conference was expected to be
    held in Baku at the end of this month.

    [Passage omitted: NATO official has commented on the issue to Mediamax
    news agency]

    "The fact that NATO's second conference is to be held not in Baku, but
    in another country has nothing to do with Armenia," the head of the
    press service of the Azerbaijani Defence Ministry, Ramiz Malikov, has
    told Ekspress newspaper. According to him, this decision was made
    before the Armenian officer's murder in Budapest and this change has
    nothing to do with Yerevan's groundless accusations: "Since the
    Cooperative Best Effort - 2005 exercises will be held in Ukraine next
    year, according to general rules, the planning conference of this
    year's exercises should have been held precisely in that country, and
    this has happened. I do not see any problems here," Malikov said.

    He also said that the second planning conference was earlier planned
    in Ukraine: "Previous information about this was incorrect".

    We should remind you that a representative of NATO's South-West
    command, Turkish Navy Capt Olcay Uyar, has said that the March
    conference will be held in Baku.

    But after the aforesaid Budapest incident, Armenia refused to send its
    servicemen to Baku under the pretext that the implementation of
    military programmes in Azerbaijan is "dangerous".
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