AZERI OFFICIAL, EXPERTS OUTRAGED BY ARMENIAN LEADER’S KARABAKH REMARKS

Turan news agency
24 Jun 04

BAKU

“One can only regret these absurd utterances which the Armenian
president (Robert Kocharyan) made from the Council of Europe’s
rostrum,” the head of the Azerbaijani presidential administration’s
foreign relations department, Novruz Mammadov, has told Turan news
agency.

“The address of the Armenian president was based on lies and he did
not even feel ashamed to lie to the European MPs,” Mammadov said,
commenting on Kocharyan’s speech at the summer session of the
Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) yesterday.

He wondered how a serious politician can say that Karabakh has never
been part of Azerbaijan and had status equal to that of Azerbaijan
within the USSR. Mammadov regarded as scandalous Kocharyan’s
confession that he had taken part in the occupation of Azerbaijan’s
territories and described him as a separatist.

Political expert Rasim Musabayov described Kocharyan’s speech as “the
behaviour of an impudent man who does not understand where he is and
how one should behave at an international forum”. I think that many
European MPs were shocked by Kocharyan’s tricks, Musabayov said.

Political expert Zardust Alizada saw nothing new in Kocharyan’s
address. “Kocharyan’s behaviour testifies to the failure of
Azerbaijani diplomacy”, he said.