ALIEV AGAIN REJECTS KARABAKH INDEPENDENCE
By Emil Danielyan

Radio Liberty, Czech Rep.
Dec 21 2006

Azerbaijan will never agree to any peaceful settlement that would
fail to restore its control over Nagorno-Karabakh, President Ilham
Aliev reiterated on Thursday.

"Nagorno-Karabakh will never be granted independence," Azerbaijani
news agencies quoted him as saying during a visit to the Azerbaijani
exclave of Nakhichevan.

Aliev said the Karabakh Armenians should settle for a status of
autonomy within Azerbaijan now or risk being offered no self-rule
at all in the future. He again claimed that Armenia will find it
increasingly hard to compete with his oil-rich nation.

"Azerbaijan’s state budget is seven times bigger than Armenia’s,
and its military budget equals that country’s entire budget," he said.

The most recent peace plan put forward by French, Russian and U.S.
mediators appears to allow for the possibility of international
recognition of Karabakh’s secession from Azerbaijan. It would enable
Karabakh’s predominantly Armenian population to determine the disputed
territory’s status in a referendum.

Despite their diametrically opposite positions on Karabakh’s status,
the conflicting parties claim to have made considerable progress
towards a compromise solution over the past two years. Aliev and
his Armenian counterpart Robert Kocharian raised fresh hopes for a
Karabakh breakthrough following their latest face-to-face talks held
in Minsk on November 28.

But Kocharian made it clear last week that he will not sign any
agreements with Azerbaijan before next spring’s Armenian parliamentary
elections. Analysts doubt that a peace deal will be cut before
presidential elections due in both Armenia and Azerbaijan in 2008.