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SYDNEY: MP's Separatist Sympathy Prompts Ire In Azerbaijan

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  • SYDNEY: MP's Separatist Sympathy Prompts Ire In Azerbaijan

    MP'S SEPARATIST SYMPATHY PROMPTS IRE IN AZERBAIJAN

    Sydney Morning Herald
    http://m.smh.com.au/nsw/mps-separatist-sympathy-prompts-ire-in-azerbaijan-20120129-1qo0t.html
    Jan 30 2012
    Australia

    The state upper house Labor MP Walt Secord has incurred the wrath
    of the government of Azerbaijan for visiting one of its disputed
    territories and siding with the sovereignty claims of the separatist
    Armenians.

    Mr Secord, a former adviser to NSW premiers Bob Carr and Kristina
    Keneally, as well as the former state treasurer Eric Roozendaal and
    former prime minister Kevin Rudd, entered the upper house after the
    March election.

    He is the deputy chairman of the NSW Parliamentary Friends of Israel
    and the deputy co-chairman of the NSW Parliamentary Friends of Armenia.

    A supporter of various separatist causes, Mr Secord visited the
    disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh last month as part of a self-funded
    trip that also took him to Israel, the Palestinian territories and
    Kurdish Iraq.

    Nagorno-Karabakh is recognised internationally, including by Australia,
    as part of the former Soviet republic of Azerbaijan but Armenia lays
    claim to the region.

    Mr Secord said he was told while there that he was the first Australian
    MP to visit the region.

    "While official recognition of the Mountainous Karabakh Re- public
    is a matter for the federal Australian government," Mr Secord said,
    "I feel I have a duty as the co-deputy chair of the NSW Parliamentary
    Friends of Armenia to see Armenia and the Mountainous Karabakh
    Republic first-hand."

    Officials from the Azerbaijani embassy in the Turkish capital, Ankara,
    complained to the Australian mission in the same city about the visit
    by the "senator of the Australian state of NSW, Walt Secord".

    An Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry spokesman, Elman Abdullayev, told
    local media: "The Australian embassy told the Azerbaijani side that the
    official stance of the country lies in recognition of the territorial
    integrity of Azerbaijan and non-recognition of any separatist regime
    in its territory."

    Mr Secord said many of his colleagues had been "flooded by an email
    campaign" protesting against his visit.

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