YEREVAN SEEKS INTERNATIONAL CONDEMNATION OF MONUMENT DESTRUCTION

Radio Liberty, Czech Rep.
Dec 20 2006

The Armenian government has launched a traveling photo exhibition
of what it claims is destruction of monuments at an ethnic Armenian
cemetery in the Azerbaijani region of Nakhichevan.

"The Armenian side intends to get international condemnation of the
destruction," Foreign Minister Vartan Oskanian said Tuesday.

The monuments in question are intricate stone-carved crosses in the
cemetery at Jugha – alternately known as Djulfe – in Nakhichevan,
an exclave wedged between Armenia and Iran and Turkey.

Armenia claims Azerbaijani soldiers have systematically destroyed the
crosses. Photos aimed at supporting the claim are currently being
shown in Strasbourg, France, and will be moved to a new city every
two months.

Azeribajani officials earlier this year denied a report that the
cemetery had vanished.

Armenia and Azerbaijan remain strongly at odds over the final status
of Nagorno-Karabakh, a region in Azerbaijan that has been under the
control of Armenian and ethnic Armenian Karabakh forces since the
1994 end of a separatist war.