Azeri MP regrets NATO call for Armenia’s “temporary control” over Karabakh

Ekho, Baku
23 Dec 04

Excerpt from report by R. Tofiqoglu in Azerbaijani newspaper Ekho on
23 December headlined “Incautious utterance” and subheaded “The head
of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly talks about Armenia’s `temporary
control’ over Karabakh”

“Frozen conflicts’ in the Georgian provinces of South Ossetia and
Abkhazia as well as in Dniester have many features in common. The
conflict, in which Armenia and Azerbaijan clashed over Nagornyy
Karabakh, is more complex and somewhat different,” the chairman of
the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, Pierre Lellouche, and the former
Spanish foreign minister, Ana Palacio, have written in their article
“Putin and ghosts of the empire” in the French magazine Le Figaro.

[Passage omitted: reported details]

“The Europeans, Americans and Russians should jointly find
a compromise, which will give Armenia temporary control over
Karabakh. The status of Karabakh can be determined in a referendum
within the next five to 10 years in the futur e.”

[Passage omitted: more details]

Commenting on Lellouche’s article, a member of the Azerbaijani
delegation to the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, [MP] Alimammad
Nuriyev, expressed “deep regret about the fact officials of such
level have no information about the roots of the Karabakh problem
and its consequences and have no interest in it, and publish strange
articles of this kind”.

“I believe that Lellouche’s proposal is absolutely unrealistic. He
is seemingly unaware that under no conditions and under no scenario
Azerbaijan will agree to lose its sovereign territories. But, in fact,
the author has precisely this in mind. They can’t expect Azerbaijan
to give official consent to Armenia’s certain “temporary control”
over Karabakh. i.e. to enable the occupier feel as master on the
captured lands. No, Azerbaijan has been trying to settle this issue
peacefully at the moment, but to no avail. I personally support the
idea that there is no other, but military, way of liberating Karabakh
from the occupation.”

The very fact that a statement of this kind was made by a high-ranking
figure such as Lellouche could only undermine the settlement process,
Nuriyev believes. “I think that at the next session or seminar of the
NATO Parliamentary Assembly, the head of our delegation should talk
to Lellouche and tell him to study the problem thoroughly before
making such calls through the media. Undoubtedly, there is a need
for telling him about Azerbaijan’s position. Regrettably it seems
that something strange is going on here.”

[Passage omitted: two more MPs share Nuriyev’s opinion]