Baku Today
July 22 2004

Russian Azerbaijanis Protest Armenian Occupation

Nearly 50 Azerbaijanis staged an authorized picket in front of the
Armenian embassy in Moscow Wednesday, demanding that Yerevan withdraw
from Azerbaijan’s occupied territories.

The protest marked the 11th anniversary of the occupation of
Azerbaijan’s Aghdam District by Armenia.

The picketers urged international organizations to give up double
standards in their approach to the occupation of the Azerbaijani
territories, chanting anti-Armenian slogans, such as `There is no
Azerbaijan without Karabakh,’ `Take your hands out of Karabakh,’
among others.

Ilqar Qasimov, head of the coordination council of the Movement for
Azerbaijan and also a General of the Russian army, told a news
briefing following the picket that although more Azerbaijanis had a
desire to attend the action, the Moscow authorities did not give
permission for a larger action.

Armenian troops occupied Aghdam and six other administrative
districts along with Nagorno-Karabakh – Azerbaijan’s western region
that was home to nearly 100,000 ethnic-Armenians in 1989 – during
1991-94 war.

A cease-fire agreement reached between the two countries in May 1994
is frequently violated by exchange of fire while peace talks mediated
by the Minsk group of the Organization for Security and Cooperation
of Europe since 1992 have yielded no result.