Azerbaijan’s president vows tougher fight against poverty, corruption

AP Worldstream; Jul 25, 2005

AIDA SULTANOVA

Azerbaijan’s president vowed Monday to intensify a fight against
poverty and corruption in this oil-rich Caspian Sea nation, promoting
his government’s course in a speech ahead of crucial parliamentary
elections later this year.

Ilham Aliev told several hundred people gathered in a city park in
Guba, 160 kilometers (100 miles) north of the capital, Baku, that his
government would earmark more than US$1 billion (Aâ=82¬830 million) in
the coming years for electric power plants and other infrastructure
projects.

“My goal is eliminate poverty, so that there are no people living in
horrible conditions; to eliminate the problems that worry people; to
put an end to the bribery and corruption that is shaking our society,
in order to create a free society,” Aliev said.

With tensions mounting ahead of parliamentary elections four months
away, Aliev has been traveling around the country, giving speeches,
meeting local officials and promoting development plans in outlying
regions, where poverty is more endemic than in Baku.

Opposition political parties fear the government could rig the
November balloting. The October 2003 presidential vote, in which Aliev
succeeded hislate father, was widely alleged to have been fraudulent,
and it triggered clashes between police and demonstrators.

“I don’t doubt that the parliamentary elections will be conducted
completely transparently and fairly and the Azerbaijani people will
express their will, just as they did in 2003,” Aliev said.

However, in a sign of the government’s nervousness at potential
protests, Deputy Interior Minister Vilayat Eyvazov on Monday accused
unnamed opposition forces of planning acts of unrest and claimed some
radical elements aimed to acquire weapons.

“We warn them that we will not tolerate this,” said the deputy
interior minister.

Separately, the Azerbaijani leader said efforts to resolve the dispute
with neighboring Armenia over the enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh were
yielding positive results.

But at the same time, he appeared to give Armenia a warning, saying
military expenditures would increase by more than 75 percent this
year.

“We don’t have our eye on someone’s land, but we will also not give up
our own land,” Aliev said. “We will build a strong army and we will
free our land at any time, by any means.”

Nagorno-Karabakh, a mountainous region inside Azerbaijan, has been
under the control of ethnic Armenians since the early 1990s, following
fighting that killed an estimated 30,000 people.

A cease-fire was signed in 1994, but the enclave’s final political
status has not been determined and shooting breaks out frequently
between the two sides, which face off across a demilitarized buffer
zone.

Thousands of Azerbaijanis displaced by the fighting continue to live
in often squalid conditions scattered around the country.
From: Baghdasarian