AZERBAIJAN CASHING IN ON OIC RELIGIOUS SENTIMENTS

ARKA
June 4, 2009

YEREVAN, July 4. /ARKA/. Azerbaijan is cashing in on the religious
sentiments of the member-countries of the Organization of the Islamic
Conference (OIC), RA Deputy Foreign Minister Shavarsh Kocharyan said,
commenting an anti-Armenian resolution adopted by the 36th conference
of the OIC Foreign Ministers in Damascus.

"Resolutions like that have hardly been adopted over the last
year except for this one," Kocharyan said in his interview to
Novosti-Armenia. He said that "Azerbaijan’s rhetoric proved effective"
at one time because "not everyone knows and remembers".

"It is no coincidence that Azerbaijan has made repeated statements on
the ineffectiveness of the OSCE Minsk Group and pronounced for going
beyond its format. The reason is that the OSCE Minsk Group is well
informed of the genesis of the conflict, all the details unknown to
many international organizations," Sh. Kocharyan said.

He said that, making successive attempts to pervert the truth about
the conflict and about its aggression against Nagorno-Karabakh, Baku
is trying to present it as a territorial dispute between Armenia
and Azerbaijan.

"They have succeeded to a certain extent, but this is the limit,"
Sh. Kocharyan said.

According to him, OIC is the only organization where Azerbaijan
recently managed to railroad the traditional resolution. "We dee
ply regret the fact that Azerbaijan is cashing in on the religious
sentiments of the IOC member-states to push resolutions like this
through it," he said.

Sh. Kocharyan also pointed out it is extremely dangerous because the
future is a dialogue, not a clash, between civilizations. "Even during
the military stage of the conflict the problem of self-determination
was not presented in a religious aspect. Azerbaijan is overstepping
the limits," Kocharyan said.