NAGORNO KARABAKH CONFLICT WILL BE SOLVED ONLY BY KOCHARIAN AND ALIYEV: PACE AD HOC COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN

TREND Information, Azerbaijan
Oct 4 2007

France, Strasbourg / corr Trend A.Maharramli / An intreview of Lord
Russel Johnston, the chairman of the Parliamentary Assembly of the
Council of Europe (PACE) Ad Hoc Commitee, with Azerbaijani journalists
on the implementation of PACE Resolution 1416.

Question: Did your meeting with the speaker Asadov take place today?

What was discussed and what are the outcomes of this meeting?

Answer: Specific outcome. I explained to him that I was anxious to see
the work of my committee continue. That it was necessary to have some
guarantees of cooperation from the both countries. And consequently I
was intending at least to write to both President Aliyev and President
Kocharian. Posibly to see them both, to visit them both. And if so
happens that I am may be in Baku on 9 November, but that is not yet
confirmed. That might be an occasion on which that might turn to
reality depending of course on the president’s schedule. I said to
speaker Asadov that I regretted the fact that the visits that have
been planed both by my committee and the cultural committee had been
cancelled at a short notice. But I hope that the situation could be
reasonably resolved.

Question: We also heard that there was a meeting yesterday in the
subcommittee between the heads of the Azerbaijani and Armenian
delegations. And apparently Armenia is interested in issues that
were discussed at this meeting, And also specifically the Azerbaijani
delegation is proposing to change the formation of these visits and
meetings, meaning to go to the Nagorno Karabakh through the Azerbaijani
territory. If that at all could be called as a change of the formation
of the work of the committee. What can you say about this?

Answer: Well, it did represent a change of the format. As the
understanding was both by me and also by Mr O’Hara at the cultural
committee that there would be an interview in Yerevan. And that was
changed very suddenly and quickly. And that was not a great problem
for me, because the meeting was the next week. But for Mr O’Hara it
meant everything be changed of the week-end with one-day notice. And
that was not really good.

Question: Would these format changes prevent the visit?

As I said before I do not regard my committee as being concerned
to mediate on Nagorno Karabakh. The idea was that we would try and
improve contact and dialog particularly in the first place between
Azeri and Armenian parliamentarians; possibly to hold seminars in
Baku and Yerevan. And try to improve the relationship, but not,
I mean … The Nagorno Karabakh conflict will only solve between
Kocharian and Aliyev in the end.

Question: The last question. There will be a meeting of the PACE’s
monitoring committee on frozen conflicts in November in Berlin. We
assume that you were invited and if so, the question is as follows:
Initially the idea was to have Azerbaijani and Armenian delegations
to discuss the things, but yesterday apparently the Armenian
delegation at the meeting with PACE president proposed to have also
the representatives of the Armenian community of Nagarno Karabakh. So
what do you think about it?

I don’t want to cover that as I know nothing about it. But if I may ask
a couple of things: the Council of Europe said to me apart from being
very anxious to see a resolution of the Nagorno Karabakh conflict and
in particular of the occupied territories with the refugees. They are
also concerned naturally about internal policies in both Azerbaijan
and Armenia.

Azerbaijan is fortunate in having huge economic growth. That should
not lead it to neglect basic democratic questions. Our main concern
is about the political prisoners, some of them are very old and sick.

And also journalists freedom. There were seven journalists imprisoned
recently. I just add that as a postscript.