INSTITUTE OF CIS COUNTRIES COMMENTS

The member of the Russian State Duma, the director of the Institute of
the CIS Countries Constantine Zatulin’s visit to Nagorno Karabakh on
May 18 gave rise to a storm of emotions in the Azerbaijani press. The
newspaper “Echo” was especially fast, interviewing K. Zatulin on the
very next day of his visit by cell phone. Why, Constantine Zatulin is
pleased with the attention of the mass media of Azerbaijan, Armenia and
Nagorno Karabakh toward his visit. He hopes that in the future, too,
he will provide the press with topics. Pointing out the perseverance
of the correspondents of “Echo”, the director of the Institute of
the CIS Countries added that his interview had been published without
major changes. However, there is need for editing, for small things
may often change a lot. The interview published in “Echo” contains a
lot of quotation marks. K. Zatulin did not mean to teach the grammar
of Russian to the Azerbaijani journalists. What the Russian member of
parliament says is that the editors of the newspaper took the majority
of his answers in inverted commas wherever they wished, following the
fashionable political trend in Azerbaijan. Thereby the “specialists”
of Russian of the newspaper “Echo” made an attempt to rank K. Zatulin
beside those who doubt the fact of independence and self-determination
of Nagorno Karabakh, the existence of a president, parliament and
political parties there. Whereas, Zatulin does not have doubts in
this reference. He is also sure that during his telephone talk with
the Azerbaijani correspondent he did not ask him to take his words in
quotation marks and make them doubtful. In the text of the interview it
is said, as if casually, that the areas of Nagorno Karabakh adjacent to
Azerbaijan are “occupied” by the troops of Armenia. In fact, K. Zatulin
spoke about the Defence Army of Nagorno Karabakh. The staff of the
newspaper “Echo” is hardly so naive not to realize the difference
between the two. And the director of the Institute does not want to
be taken as a naive person in the Azerbaijani press either. Part of
the answers of K. Zatulin were omitted or distorted. In particular,
speaking about the genuinely democratic elections in Nagorno Karabakh
as distinct from false democracy in a number of CIS countries, he
brought interesting examples of “democracy” when the political order
is based on the succession from father to son. Unfortunately, in
this case the readers of “Echo” were not given a chance to assess the
delicacy of the arguments of Zatulin. In another case, in reference
to granting independence to Nagorno Karabakh as expansion of the
territory of Armenia Zatulin gave the example of Cyprus and Greece.
Although it seemed that the conflict of Cyprus and the division
of Cyprus into Turkish and Greek parts would result in its rapid
unification with Greece, Cyprus and Greece continue existing as
separate recognized states represented in the UN and the European
Union. The Russian member of parliament regretted that this part of
the interview had been incidentally omitted.

AA. 01-06-2005