Russia & CIS General Newswire
November 30, 2007 Friday 5:11 PM MSK

Baku denies exceeding CFE quotas

BAKU Nov 30

Azerbaijan is not violating its quotas on armaments under the Treaty
on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE), Azeri Defense Ministry
spokesman Eldar Sabiroglu said at a press conference on Friday.

"Armenia, which is an aggressor country, has been accusing us of that
[of exceeding the limits stipulated by the CFE] for years. However,
Azerbaijan has not violated the limits," Sabiroglu said.

When Azerbaijan and Armenia were in the process of joining the CFE,
they were both allowed to have an equal amount of weapons, "although
this is unfair, taking into account the size of Azerbaijan’s
territory and its population," he said.

Sabiroglu described Armenian Foreign Minister Vardan Oskanian’s
statement alleging that Azerbaijan has exceeded its CFE limits as an
attempt "to blacken Azerbaijan in the international community’s
eyes."

"Armenia itself is building up its arms and it is doing so quite
actively, and everybody knows who is helping it," Sabiroglu said.

"Armenia was once given weapons worth $1 billion, which at first they
tried to conceal, but then later had to admit to," he said.

"The same happened later as well," he said.

Commenting on the possibility that Russia and the U.S. could jointly
use the Gabala radar station, Sabiroglu said the station belongs to
Azerbaijan, and therefore no decisions on its use can be made without
permission from Baku.

As for the plans of using the radar station after 2012, when the term
of its lease by Russia expires, Sabiroglu said, "There have been no
specific proposals so far on its use in the future." va rp dp