ARMENIAN OFFICIALS REFUSE TO ATTEND MEETING IN AZERBAIJAN

Today, Azerbaijan
May 31 2006

Armenian defense officials refused to attend a meeting of military
chiefs from ex-Soviet republics in neighboring Azerbaijan, saying
officials there could not guarantee their safety, an Armenian official
said Tuesday.

According to the Associated Press, an Azerbaijani official said,
however, that Baku had demanded Armenia be excluded from the
Commonwealth of Independent States defense ministers’ meeting,
beginning today in Baku, because Armenia was occupying Azerbaijani
territory.

Tensions between the two ex-Soviet republics remain high over
Nagorno-Karabakh — an enclave within Azerbaijan that has been
controlled by ethnic Armenians since a war in the early 1990s that
killed 30,000 people and drove about 1 million people from their homes.

Sporadic border clashes regularly break out, and a lack of resolution
has hampered development throughout the strategic Caucasus region.

Armenian Defense Ministry spokesman Col. Seiran Shakhsuvarian said
a delegation would not attend the Baku meeting because Azerbaijani
officials could not guarantee the Armenians would be adequately
protected.

Azerbaijani Defense Ministry spokesman Ilgar Verdiyev said Armenia’s
complaints about a lack of security “do not correspond to reality.”

“We came out against the participation at the meeting of
occupier-countries – Armenia – which occupies 20 percent of territory
long held by Azerbaijan,” Verdiyev said.