AZERI LEADER VISITING RUSSIA AS BAKU STEPS UP WAR PREPARATIONS

Yeni Musavat
Nov 23 2009
Azerbaijan

The Azerbaijani president is set to visit Russia on 24 November as
the government is stepping up preparations for a new war to retake
the breakaway region of Nagornyy Karabakh from Armenia.

The visit comes a day after Ilham Aliyev met his Armenian counterpart,
Serzh Sargsyan, in Munich for talks which Aliyev had said were the
last chance to resolve the conflict peacefully.

After the four-hour talks in Munich, "it can be said that the option
to resolve the Nagornyy Karabakh conflict peacefully is a complete
fiasco," Yeni Musavat said in a front page commentary on 23 November.

"Azerbaijan has stepped up war preparations significantly… According
to some reports, the political and military elite in Russia has even
tacitly allowed Azerbaijan to start limited military operations in
Nagornyy Karabakh," the newspaper said, quoting a "quite respectable"
source.