ARMENIAN LEADER “CREATING TENSION” TO COVER HIS OWN FAILURE – AZERI TV

ANS TV, Baku
24 Jun 04

(Presenter) Hostilities on the Armenian-Azerbaijani front line have
become a daily routine over the past month. Armenian attacks are
gradually taking on a more protracted nature.

(Passage omitted: A round-up of latest incidents on the front line)

(Reporter) There are grounds to say that intensive activities by the
Armenians have a number of reasons. First, Georgia and Azerbaijan made
statements on a number of serious economic projects earlier this
month. One of the projects that will ensure the Armenians’
international isolation is the construction of the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars
railway link. If this project materializes, Armenia will lose its last
chance of linking to international communication lines.

The second is the continuing domestic political crisis in Armenia. On
14 June when another opposition rally was brutally dispersed in
Yerevan, the Dashnaks fired at the village of Mazam in Qazax District
(northwest Azerbaijan) on the front line.

It seems that Armenian President Robert Kocharyan wants to counter
Azerbaijan’s success in the international arena and his own failure in
Armenia by creating tension on the front line. In this context, his
radical statement from the rostrum (of the Parliamentary Assembly of
the Council of Europe) in Strasbourg on 23 June is no coincidence.

(Kocharyan said that Karabakh has never been part of independent
Azerbaijan and that Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity has nothing to
do with the Nagornyy Karabakh Republic)