Fight against terrorism

Baku Sun, Azerbaijan
Nov 26 2004

BAKU (AP) – Azerbaijan is stepping up the fight against terrorism
by tracking down terrorist organizations and their sponsors, the
country’s defense minister said Thursday. During the past six years,
authorities have exposed six branches of charity foundations believed
to be financing terrorists, Defense Minister Ramil Usubov said at a
NATO Parliamentary Assembly seminar.

The organizations have been shut and 43 people associated with them
have been expelled from the country, Usubov added.

Meanwhile, in the last five years, authorities have detained 30 people
connected with the Islamic Jihad and the Islamic Army of the Caucasus
terrorist organizations, he said. Twenty members of rebel groups have
been tried in courts.Usubov also said that Azerbaijan has detained
and extradited to Russia 14 rebels believed to have organized various
terrorist attacks.

He stressed that one of Azerbaijan’s main problems was illegal
migration, which fuels drugs and weapons trafficking, as well as
human trafficking and the smuggling of goods across borders.

The three-day seminar was supposed to have been attended by two
Armenian lawmakers, but they failed to show up at the last minute.

The Armenian deputies decided not to attend because their letter
to the heads of the Azerbaijani parliament and NATO Parliamentary
Assembly with a request to guarantee security of the Armenian
deputies had been left unanswered, said Mher Shakhgeldian, head of
the Armenian parliament’s commission for defense matters.Previous
visits to Baku by Armenian officials resulted in protests staged by
activists of Nagorno-Karabakh – an ethnic Armenian enclave disputed
by both countries.

Neither Armenia nor Azerbaijan is a NATO member, but both former
Soviet republics participate in NATO’s Partnership for Peace program.