ALIYEV SAYS ARMENIA SHOULD ‘LIBERATE’ FIRST

Asbarez
Jan 27th, 2010

DAVOS, Switzerland-Azeri President Ilham Aliyev told the Wall Street
Journal on Wednesday that he was confident that Turkey would not ratify
the Armenia-Turkey protocols until Armenia "returned" the liberated
territories around Karabakh and the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic itself
to Azerbaijan’s control.

"There is a common understanding in the region that there should
be a first step by Armenia to start the liberation of the occupied
territories," Aliyev told the Wall Street Journal in an interview
conducted in the margins of the World Economic Forum. He also told
the Journal that he was "fully satisfied" with Turkey’s understanding
of the issue, despite his past harsh criticism.

"If the two issues are disconnected, then probably Armenia will freeze
negotiations with Azerbaijan (over Nagorno Karabakh)," Aliyev told the
Journal, which reported that Aliyev, in the past, has threatened war.

"Now we are approaching the moment when things get more and more
difficult," President Serzh Sarkisian’s deputy chief of staff Vigen
Sargsyan told the Wall Street Journal.

Sargsyan told the WSJ that while Armenia’s government is sending
the protocols to parliament for ratification, it is also preparing
legislation to enable the president to withdraw his signature from
treaties.

"If this opportunity is lost it will push the whole region back,
not to where we started when talks began but beyond that," Sargsyan
told the WSJ.

The WSJ reported that Aliyev has expressed anger over the
Turkey-Armenia talks by threatening to reroute Azeri natural gas
and oil exports away from Turkey. "Azerbaijan can export gas in four
directions: Turkey, Georgia, Iran and Russia," Aliyev told the WSJ.

The Azeri president also expressed his frustration over delays
in the construction of the Nabucco pipeline. In an interview with
Bloomberg TV Wednesday, Aliyev complained of a lack of leadership in
the pipeline project. He told the Wall Street Journal that he would
entertain selling as much gas to Russia’s Gazprom if the pipeline
were delayed. The concept of the Western-backed Nabucco pipeline is
to side-step and diversify supplies away from Russia in an effort to
diminish its energy influence in the region.

"So far we do not know who is that leader who will move this process
forward," Aliyev said in an interview with Bloomberg Television. "Who
will engage itself in negotiations with gas producers, transiters? Who
will do the marketing for this gas? What will be the pricing?

"So a lot of questions that are not answered for quite a lot of time,"
Aliyev told Bloomberg TV.