Azeri opposition daily lambasts US mediator for Karabakh remarks
Yeni Musavat, Baku
14 Jul 06
An Azerbaijani opposition daily has criticized the new US mediator
for the Nagornyy Karabakh conflict for ignoring the public opinion in
Azerbaijan and insisting on a referendum on the breakaway region’s
legal status. The paper said that the US co-chairman of the OSCE
Minsk Group, Matthew Bryza, was confident that the Azerbaijani
government could quell any public opposition to an agreement with
Armenia on holding a referendum in Nagornyy Karabakh. The following
is the text of Alya’s report in Azerbaijani newspaper Yeni Musavat
on 14 July entitled "Who should make Bryza silent?":
[US co-chairman of the OSCE Minsk Group] Matthew Bryza has again
spoken about a referendum in Adana [in Turkey]. A couple of hours
before the final completion of the USA’s useless project, i.e. the
opening ceremony of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline, he gave
an interview to journalists to say that there was no other way to
settle the Karabakh problem and that the [Azerbaijani and Armenian]
presidents should persuade their peoples to agree to this idea
[referendum on Nagornyy Karabakh’s status].
It emerged that the new co-chair of the OSCE Minsk Group is absolutely
indifferent to the public opinion outside the USA. This means that
Matthew Bryza could not care less about the negative attitude of the
Azerbaijani people towards the referendum. How else can one assess the
statements by Bryza who is obstinately insisting on the referendum
even after seeing the negative public reaction following his first
statement? Even if he had not noticed this negative reaction, he
should have guessed because of his official post that like other
world nations, the people of Azerbaijan will protest resolutely
against the proposal to cede their lands.
As it is out of the question that the new mediator, who joined the
Karabakh settlement process late but fervently, knows nothing about
such simple matters, his behaviour might also be explained by the
fact that he regards as insignificant both the public opinion in
Azerbaijan and our reaction to the issue.
Why? Is it because he is confident that the authorities can at
any time (for example, after [Azerbaijani President] Ilham Aliyev
consents to sign a peace agreement on holding a referendum) quell any
opposition, or does he consider that we are not strong and decisive
enough? In my view, we should now think more about this rather than
the international situation that can make a peace agreement possible
or impossible.
True, for the time being it is a decisive factor that Russia is not
interested in the resolution of the Karabakh problem. But there is
no guarantee that the situation will not change. Russia might one
day compromise Azerbaijan to its eternal rival as it compromised
Afghanistan and conceded Iraq to the USA after its international
position was shaken. The history has seen many events which once
seemed unlikely.
The matter has another unpleasant aspect – it is international factors
that have turned Karabakh into a subject of endless bargaining;
Ilham Aliyev was permitted to commit election fraud precisely as a
result of this bargaining; it
is this bargaining that holds back Azerbaijan’s development and
has doomed
us to live under the tyranny of a repressive and corrupt regime. We
have been onlookers of this bargaining for many years and we
have been feeling the growing damage of it with every cell of our
body. If we finally want to put an end to it, we should think about
eliminating the reasons behind this attitude rather than being
surprised at the occupying boldness and demonstrative disrespect
of Bush’s envoys. There is no need for tedious pondering and long
research. We simply must get rid of our status of onlookers, stop
bowing to officials from a district police officer to Ilham Aliyev,
and remove animal fear from our hearts.
Given our "qualities", we should not be surprised at what is
happening. Do we not know that we are "a bit" weak in putting up
resistance? Those on the other shores of the ocean probably know this
better than we do. Maybe they hesitated at the beginning. But after
seeing that we show endurance to the most brutal election violence
and the worst methods of pillage, they have calmed down and began
to seek Ilham Aliyev’s consent only.
They were very anxious after the 2003 presidential election. They
arrived in Baku under the guise of experts of some international
organization and asked representatives of NGOs and of various layers
of society and politicians probing questions. They asked everyone:
"Do you think the election could lead to growing terrorist moods and
Islamic fundamentalism in Azerbaijan?" They tried to find out how
real was the danger of a civil war. I myself came across one of them
at one of those meetings. He insisted that I should tell him if a
civil war was possible in five or 10 years. In fact, his questions
made me laugh because just a month had passed since the 16 October
[2003 presidential election] events and I still remembered well what
part (percentage) of my dear Azerbaijani people could dare to fight.
I still remember it. The reason people like Steven Mann, Matthew
Bryza and others are coming to us demanding that we "concede Karabakh"
is that there were
few of us on that day. Those "brave boys" – "impartial" and
"honest" who
claimed that we were born to fight not them [referring to ANS TV
and radio] – dared to call us "violent" because there were few of
us on that day. But the situation has not changed yet.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress