Baku Today, Azerbaijan
May 8 2004

Marchers Reach Frontline, Are Stopped By Azerbaijani Army

Nearly 220 marchers, 120 of the from the Karabakh Liberation
Organization (KLO) and 100 from local residents, have already reached
the frontline, a KLO official told the Baku Today in a telephone
interview from Susanli village of Aghdam District.
Kazim Salimi, deputy head of KLO, said after the police prevented
them from starting the march in Baku early the day, the KLO members
left the capital in cars and reached Barda District.
Then they marched to the frontline form Barda, but stopped there by
the Azerbaijani army and were not allowed to cross to the territories
occupied by Armenians, Salimi said.

`We are not going to resist our army,’ Salimi said, adding that the
marchers are going to dissemble after reading their statement.

Police cordoned off Martyrs’ Alley around 12 a.m. today and prevented
the KLO members to start the unauthorized march from Baku.

`This once again displays the attitude of the Azerbaijani authorities
to the Karabakh problem,’ the KLO leader Akif Naghi told reporters,
adding that those trying to prevent them from marching to their
occupied territories would feel sorry for their move in the future.

The KLO leader said the peace negotiations mediated by OSCE’s Minsk
group since 1992 are aimed at making the Azerbaijani people gradually
forget Nagorno-Karabakh.

He said Shusha and Karabakh mean `the fate’ of the Azerbaijani and
that without Karabakh no Azeri statehood could be imagined.