RUSSIAN POLITICIAN ASSESSES REPEAT CHANGES TO DEPARTMENT OF STATE’S REPORT AS SUCCESS OF AZERBAIJAN DIPLOMACY

Trend News Agency, Azerbaijan
April 27 2007

Azerbaijan, Baku / corr. Trend A.Gasimova / Russian politician, Head
of the Political and Economic Department of Kommersant newspaper,
Azer Mursaliyev, considers that making changes to the report of the
US Department of State on Human Rights is a success of the Azerbaijani
diplomacy.

On 6 March the Department of State published a report regarding
situation of human rights. The report reflected the fact of occupation
of the Azerbaijani territory of Nagorno-Karabakh and seven surrounding
Azerbaijani territories by Armenia. On 20 April changes were made
to the provision reflecting the occupation fact. Due to it, the
Azerbaijani Government had postponed a visit of the Azerbaijani
delegation to Washington for bilateral security talks, scheduled for
April 23-24. On 25 April the Department of State restored the initial
variant of the report.

Mursaliyev said that Washington was not expecting such a reaction by
Azerbaijan to the changes by the Department of State. "The situation
and relations with Azerbaijan would be even without this success,
but Armenia needed to satisfy and actively attract them due to the
forthcoming parliamentary elections in the country. And 20 April
changes were trial gesture to Armenia. The logic is clear here. Now
Armenia does not hope for anywhere, but Azerbaijan needs to satisfy,"
Mursaliyev said, adding that the Department of State achieved it with
its changes on 25 April.