REGNUM STATEMENT ON ARCHITECTURAL SITES IN THE WORLD AND TRANSCAUCASUS

Regnum, Russia
May 22 2006

On May 21, Azerbaijani Day.az web-site released information that
Azerbaijani Ambassador to Russia Polad Bul-Bul Ogli was going “to
take very serious measures against REGNUM, including taking it into
court, if it is necessary.” The statement was based on REGNUM reports
about discussion of members of the Russian Public Chamber on future
of Armenian architectural sites (khachkars) located in Nakhichevan.

According to the ambassador, the Russian Public Chamber did not
actually discuss the question.

Sincerely respecting Mr. Bul-Bul Ogli as an outstanding artist,
long-term Culture Minister of Azerbaijan, we have to note that he
arrogates information to REGNUM, which has not actually been released
by the agency.

As it is evident from our May 17 report, the appeal on the khachkars
future was discussed by Commission of the Public Chamber on Cultural
Sites and Spiritual Heritage and not at a plenary session of the
chamber itself. Primarily, editors of Russian Armenians’ Yerkramas
Newspaper received information about the commission’s session. Our
news article contained reference to the source pointing out in such way
to the fact that only viewpoint of the Armenian side on the event was
presented. Later, we received and published exclusive commentary on the
held session of Commission Deputy Chairperson Galina Bogolyubova. Her
commentary clearly demonstrated that the Public Chamber Commission had
approached to difficult question of Transcaucasian cultural heritage’s
preservation from positions of peace and tolerance, not focusing on
accusations against any single country of the region.

Question of Armenian cultural sites in Nakhichevan, as well as
Azerbaijani sites in Nagorno Karabakh, was politicized to the highest
extent during Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict and it often became
subject of verbal dueling of the conflicting parties. Covering the
situation in Transcaucasus every day for many years, REGNUM wishes to
become the site, where both Armenian and Azerbaijani public figures and
experts could express their ideas concerning ways of Karabakh conflict
settlement. The position of us has already obtained recognition of
many people in both countries. And we believe it to be inadmissible
to allow that our agency’s activities in this direction would suffer
as a result of the misunderstanding.