Banning Armenian officers’ visit would not hurt relations with NATO

Baku Today, Azerbaijan
Sept 5 2004

The Popular Front Party of Azerbaijan (PFPA) hosted a roundtable,
“Repressions against those who care for Garabagh and public opinion”,
on Friday.

AssA-Irada/BT — The party chairman Ali Karimli condemned the arrest
of the Garabagh Liberation Organization (GLO) members and said
that allowing Armenian officers to Azerbaijan represents a policy
of surrender.

Karimli stated that Armenia’s aggression against Azerbaijan is not
creating any hurdles for this country’s cooperation with NATO, and
that forbidding the visit of Armenian officers to Baku would not hurt
the NATO-Azerbaijan relations either. He demanded the government to
put end to such a policy, not to interact with Armenia in any way
until Azerbaijan’s occupied territories are liberated.

The PFPA chairman also demanded to ban the visit of Armenian officers
to Baku and to release the imprisoned GLO members. He also said it
was important for local media to express a common national position
with regard to the GLO members.

Azerbaijan lost control over its mainly ethnic-Armenian populated
autonomous region of Nagorno(Daghlig)-Karabakh and also over its
seven administrative districts, Lachin, Kalbejer, Aghdam, Fuzuli,
Jerail, Zengilan and Gubadli in 1992-94 war with Armenia.

The conflict turned to a full-fledged war after the Soviet Union
collapsed in late 1991, forcing around 700,000 Azerbaijanis to leave
their homes in the occupied territories.

Some 300,000 ethnic Azerbaijanis also left their homes in Armenia
and the same number of ethnic-Armenians had to move from Azerbaijan
in 1988-90.