Associated Press Worldstream
February 23, 2005 Wednesday 12:53 PM Eastern Time
Azerbaijani president calls for international recognition of
notorious attack during war with Armenia
BAKU, Azerbaijan
Azerbaijan’s president on Wednesday called for world recognition of a
notorious attack during the six-year war with Armenia that
Azerbaijanis say killed hundreds.
Ilham Aliyev said the attack on the village of Khodzhaly in the
Nagorno-Karabakh enclave was “the worst crime not only against the
Azerbaijani people but against all of humanity,” according to a
statement released by the state-run Azertaj news agency.
He said the attack was “part of a 200-year political campaign of
genocide and ethnic cleansing by Armenian nationalists against the
Azerbaijani people.”
Armenian forces rushed into Khodzhaly on Feb. 26, 1992, in an attack
that resulted in the deaths of 613 Azerbaijanis, according to
Azerbaijani authorities. Armenian forces do not deny the attack, but
say the death toll is exaggerated.
The incident appalled Azerbaijanis and the anniversary of the attack
is observed every year with rallies and speeches in Baku.
Ethnic Armenian forces backed by Armenia drove Azerbaijani troops out
of Nagorno-Karabakh in the 1990s during a six-year war that killed
some 30,000 people and sent 1 million fleeing from their homes. A
cease-fire was reached in 1994, but the final status of the enclave,
whose self-proclaimed sovereignty is not recognized internationally,
is unresolved.
The dispute continues to damage both nations’ economies and the
threat of renewed war hangs over the region.