AZERBAIJAN DENIES REPORT OF DESTRUCTION OF ETHNIC ARMENIAN CEMETERY
AP Worldstream
May 16, 2006
An aide to Azerbaijan’s president on Tuesday denied a report that a
centuries-old ethnic Armenia cemetery had been destroyed.
The report by the Institute for War and Peace Reporting said the
medieval-period Djulfa cemetery in the exclave of Nakhichevan, which
once had thousands of intricately carved crosses, had vanished. The
report said its journalist was not allowed by accompanying security
forces to go to the cemetery site, but that the journalist was near
enough to see the cemetery was gone.
“This is an absolutely lying publication and statement,” said Ali
Hasanov, an aide to President Ilham Aliev. “Not one cultural-historical
monument, not one Armenian cemetery in the Nakhichevan autonomous
republic has been destroyed.”
Accusations that Azerbaijan had destroyed the cemetery have raised
tensions between Azerbaijan and Armenia, which are at odds over
Nagorno-Karabakh, an enclave in Azerbaijan that has been under control
of Armenian and local Karabakh forces since a separatist war ended
with a shaky cease-fire in 1994.
The Djulfa cemetery site is generally off-limits because it lies in
a security zone along the Iranian border.
Hasanov said the government was ready to work with international
commissions to clarify the status of cultural and historical sites,
including within Nagorno-Karabakh. Azerbaijan accuses Armenians in
the enclave and surrounding occupied territories of destroying mosques
and Muslim cemeteries.