Azerbaijani police detain anti-Armenian protesters

AP Worldstream
Oct 12, 2004

Azerbaijani police on Tuesday briefly detained five activists of the
Popular Front of United Azerbaijan who tried to hold an unsanctioned
rally outside parliament to protest Armenian legislators’ planned
participation in a NATO-sponsored seminar next month.

About 30 protesters gathered in the Alley of Martyrs, where Azerbaijani
soldiers killed during the war in Nagorno-Karabakh are buried. They
then marched toward parliament, carrying party flags and banners
reading “Down with the Armenian Occupiers!” Police cut them off and
confiscation their flags, banners and leaflets.

Police told The Associated Press that all five protesters had been
released.

The Popular Front plans further protests this month outside the
U.S. Embassy and the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry. On Nov. 2, the
front will rally outside the Turkish Embassy.

The Armenian legislators are due to take part in a Nov. 26-28 NATO
Parliamentary Assembly seminar in Baku called Rose Route.

Nagorno-Karabakh is an enclave in Azerbaijan that has been under
control of ethnic Armenian forces for more than a decade. A cease-fire
was signed in 1994 after Azerbaijani forces were driven out in a
six-year war that killed some 30,000 people and drove a million from
their homes, but the enclave’s final status has not been resolved and
shooting still breaks out sporadically along the “line of control”
that separates the enclave from the rest of Azerbaijan.

Talks under the auspices of the Organization for Security and
Cooperation in Europe have not made visible progress in recent years,
although hopes had risen in 2001 that a settlement was near.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress