Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

BAKU: Armenian Officials Refuse To Attend Meeting In Azerbaijan

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

  • BAKU: Armenian Officials Refuse To Attend Meeting In Azerbaijan

    ARMENIAN OFFICIALS REFUSE TO ATTEND MEETING IN AZERBAIJAN

    Today, Azerbaijan
    May 31 2006

    Armenian defense officials refused to attend a meeting of military
    chiefs from ex-Soviet republics in neighboring Azerbaijan, saying
    officials there could not guarantee their safety, an Armenian official
    said Tuesday.

    According to the Associated Press, an Azerbaijani official said,
    however, that Baku had demanded Armenia be excluded from the
    Commonwealth of Independent States defense ministers' meeting,
    beginning today in Baku, because Armenia was occupying Azerbaijani
    territory.

    Tensions between the two ex-Soviet republics remain high over
    Nagorno-Karabakh -- an enclave within Azerbaijan that has been
    controlled by ethnic Armenians since a war in the early 1990s that
    killed 30,000 people and drove about 1 million people from their homes.

    Sporadic border clashes regularly break out, and a lack of resolution
    has hampered development throughout the strategic Caucasus region.

    Armenian Defense Ministry spokesman Col. Seiran Shakhsuvarian said
    a delegation would not attend the Baku meeting because Azerbaijani
    officials could not guarantee the Armenians would be adequately
    protected.

    Azerbaijani Defense Ministry spokesman Ilgar Verdiyev said Armenia's
    complaints about a lack of security "do not correspond to reality."

    "We came out against the participation at the meeting of
    occupier-countries - Armenia - which occupies 20 percent of territory
    long held by Azerbaijan," Verdiyev said.
Working...
X