AZERI KARABAKH COMMUNITY LEADER, EU OFFICIAL DISCUSS CONFLICT SETTLEMENT

Trend news agency
21 Jul 07

Baku, 21 July: The special representative of the European Union
in the South Caucasus, Peter Semneby, has highly rated the recent
bilateral visit of Azerbaijani and Armenian intellectuals and expressed
his readiness to help continue this process. Semneby said this at a
meeting with the leader of Nagornyy Karabakh’s Azerbaijani community,
Nizami Bahmanov, on Saturday [21 July].

According to the European diplomat, he is also ready to initiate a
meeting between the Azerbaijani and Armenian communities of Nagornyy
Karabakh. In his opinion, such visits create a favourable atmosphere
to solve the conflict.

Semneby also said that he plans to visit the occupied territories of
Azerbaijan in the near future. During this visit, he intends to tour
these territories on his own and evaluate what he sees.

The EU special representative expressed his support for the OSCE
Minsk Group which is engaged in settling the Nagornyy Karabakh
conflict. Semneby said that the EU is considering the possibility of
more active involvement in the settlement of the Nagornyy Karabakh
conflict. "This cannot be seen as an alternative to the activities
of the OSCE Minsk Group since this might retard the process,"
Semneby said.

For his part, Bahmanov also positively assessed the visit of
Azerbaijani intellectual to Nagornyy Karabakh, but pointed out that
Azerbaijanis cannot hold meetings in places where there is the flag
and coat of arms of the separatist regime. In his opinion, such a
meeting can he held in any other place, for example, in some burnt
house or cultural centre.

Bahmanov noted the position of the Azerbaijani side again, according
to which the status of Nagornyy Karabakh can be discussed only after
the return of the 70,000-strong Azerbaijani community to its land.

Bahmanov expressed his protest against the recent visit to the occupied
territories of Azerbaijan by Peter Semneby’s assistants without Baku’s
permission, saying that these actions might have a negative impact on
the implementation of the EU’s neighbourhood programme. In response,
Semneby said that he was supposed to take part in this journey,
which had been agreed with the Azerbaijani government, but then he
cancelled his visit and his assistants went to Karabakh in his stead.

A film made by the Heydar Aliyev Foundation on the Armenian occupation
of Nagornyy Karabakh was demonstrated at the end of the meeting.