AZERBAIJAN NOT INTERFERES INTO TURKEY’S AFFAIRS: AZERBAIJANI FOREIGN MINISTER

TREND News Agency
Aug 29 2008
Azerbaijan

Turkey, Ankara, 29 August / Trend News corr. T.Aliyev / Official Baku
considers that Turkish President Abdullah Gul’s visit to Armenia to
participate in a football match is Turkey’s interior affair.

"This is the matter of Turkey and we are not going to interfere
into it," Elmar Mammadyarov, the Azerbaijani Foreign Minister, told
journalists when he arrived in Ankara.

Earlier the Armenian President Serzh Sarkisyan invited Gul to the match
between the Turkish and Armenian National football teams to be held in
Yerevan on 6 September. Communities of Azerbaijan, Turkey and Armenia
attentively follow whether Gul will accept the Armenian President’s
invitation, with whom Turkey does not have diplomatic relations.

Armenia and Turkey do not have diplomatic relations and the Armenian
and Turkish border has been closed since 1993. Ankara urges Armenia to
refuse from policy of the international recognition of the Armenian
genocide in Ottoman Empire, to recognize borders of Turkey, as well
as to free occupied territories of Azerbaijan in order to establish
bilateral relations.

The Azerbaijani Foreign Minister arrived in Ankara with one-day visit
to discuss situation in Caucasus after developments in Georgia, as
well as issues on Caucasus stability and co-operation platform with
the Turkish leadership. The Turkish Premier Rejeb Tayyib Erdogan
initiated this platform.