KARABAKH VOTES TO ELECT NEW PRESIDENT

Alalam News Network, Iran
July 19 2007

STEPANAKERT, July 19–Voters went to the polls Thursday in Azerbaijan’s
breakaway region of Nagorny Karabakh to elect a new president for
the Armenian-controlled mountain enclave.

Officials said they hoped the vote would shore up the region’s
democratic credentials, boosting its efforts to become an
internationally recognized country after 15 years of self-declared
independence.

No country in the world recognizes the independence of Karabakh and
the international community has ignored the vote. Azerbaijan has
already denounced the election as having "no legal effect whatsoever."

Analysts said Bako Sahakian, a former head of the state security
service, was most likely to replace Arkady Ghukasian, who is ineligible
to run after two terms as president.

Polls opened at 0300 GMT and were to close at 1500 GMT. At a school
near the center of the local capital, Stepanakert, a trickle of voters
were casting their ballots.

Backed by their ethnic brethren in Armenia, separatists seized Karabakh
and seven surrounding regions from Azerbaijan in the early 1990s.

The war was one of the bloodiest of the many conflicts that followed
the collapse of the Soviet Union, claiming 30,000 lives and forcing
nearly one million people on both sides to flee their homes.

Armenia and Azerbaijan remain officially at war over Karabakh and
the dispute is a major source of instability in the strategic South
Caucasus region wedged between Iran, Russia and Turkey.

Heavily armed and supported by Armenia’s widespread diaspora
community, Karabakh’s 150,000 people have remained defiant in the
face of oil-rich Azerbaijan’s vows to regain control of the region,
by force if necessary.

Sporadic clashes continue along Karabakh’s border.

A full-blown conflict could derail Western-backed efforts to build
a corridor of pipelines to carry Azerbaijani and Central Asian oil
and gas through the South Caucasus to Europe.

International mediation to resolve the conflict has repeatedly failed.

Five candidates are registered in the Karabakh presidential race.

Analysts said Masis Maylian, a deputy foreign minister who claims
to represent a reformist camp within the government, was running a
distant second to Sahakian.

There are few fundamental differences between the platforms of the
various contenders, with all promising to continue the fight for
independence and bring economic reform.

Preliminary results are expected Friday.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress