Gen Bako Saakyan elected new president of Nagorno-Karabakh
ITAR-TASS News Agency, Russia
July 21, 2007 Saturday 10:55 AM EST
General Bako Saakyan, 47, has been elected president of
Nagorno-Karabakh.
According to the Central Election Commission, Saakyan won 85.12
percent of votes in the presidential elections in Nagorno-Karabakh.
At the same time, the European Union "does not recognise
Nagorno-Karabakh’s independence and is not going to recognise the
results of the elections". "The EU underlines that it does not
recognise the independence of Nagorno-Karabakh. Neither does it
recognise the legitimacy of these ‘presidential elections’," Portugal,
which holds the EU presidency, said in a statement on Friday.
The statement was also signed by Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Georgia,
Iceland, Liechtenstein, Macedonia, Moldova, Norway, Serbia, Turkey,
Ukraine, Croatia and Montenegro.
The statement says these elections could not have any impact on the
peaceful solution to the Karabakh problem.
According to reports from Stepanakert, it’s a legitimately elected
people’s leader of Nagorno-Karabakh who will be able to hold talks
on the Karabakh settlement.
Saakyan graduated from the law department of Karabakh State University.
In 1999-2001 he was head of the Nagorno-Karabakh Interior Ministry.
>>From August 2001 to February 2004 he was chief of the
Nagorno-Karabakh National Security’s state department.
>>From February 2004 to June 2007 he was director of the
Nagorno-Karabakh Republic National Security Service.
Armenian President Robert Kocharyan said his country had not interfered
into presidential elections in Nagorno-Karabakh.
Opening a surfing centre on Sevan Lake, Kocharyan said, "There was no
interference from Armenian authorities into the recent presidential
elections in Nagorno-Karabakh."
"We left all at the Nagorno-Karabakh people’s disposal in order to
elect a winner on the base of the results of the election campaign
and the fair political struggle," the Armenian president stressed.
"The elections were organised very well," Kocharyan said. Armenia’s
authorities watched the elections, as well as the election campaign,
very attentively, he added.
Azerbaijan – which lost a war for control of the mountainous territory
in the 1990s – called the vote illegal while the European Union said
it did not recognise the election on Thursday as legitimate.
Nagorno-Karabakh, populated mainly by ethnic Armenians, is legally
part of mainly Muslim Azerbaijan. It has run its own affairs since
forcing out Azeri forces in a war that killed 35,000 people and
displaced more than a million civilians.
It has declared itself an independent state but that has not been
recognised by any country. Efforts to negotiate a settlement with
Azerbaijan have made no substantial progress.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
