AZERBAIJAN TO PULL TROOPS FROM KOSOVO: OFFICIAL

Reuters
Thu Feb 28, 2008 7:35am EST

BAKU (Reuters) – Azeri President Ilham Aliyev has asked parliament
to vote to withdraw the ex-Soviet country’s peacekeepers from Kosovo,
an Azeri official said on Thursday.

Aliyev submitted the initiative to a parliamentary committee this
week, and the vote is expected on March 4. The proposal is expected
to pass into law with little opposition.

Azerbaijan has had 33 soldiers serving in Kosovo since 1999 with a
Turkish battalion under NATO command.

Deputy Foreign Minister Araz Azimov said Kosovo’s recent declaration
of independence from Serbia had "sharply changed the political scene".

"Azerbaijan, as well as a host of other NATO partner-countries, is
now re-examining the position of its peacekeeping platoon," Azimov
told reporters.

Azerbaijan is locked in a once-bloody dispute with neighbor Armenia
over the Nagorno-Karabakh region. The countries are technically still
at war and Baku fears Kosovo’s independence will embolden regional
separatists further.

Ethnic Armenian separatists in Nagorno-Karabakh threw off Azerbaijan’s
rule in a 1990s war that killed about 35,000 people and sent hundreds
of thousands fleeing.

Azerbaijan has vowed to restore its control. The region is host to
a pipeline pumping Caspian Sea oil to world markets.

Azimov said his country was not changing its relationship with NATO,
where it cooperates in educational exchanges and joint troop training,
and Baku had recently doubled its commitment to the alliance’s presence
in Afghanistan.

(Reporting by Lada Yevgrashina, writing by Chris Baldwin, editing by
Elizabeth Piper)