Armenian officers not given visas to attend NATO drills in Azerbaijan
ANS TV, Baku
13 Sep 04
[Presenter] NATO exercises start in Baku today. However, it is
still unclear whether Armenian officers will attend the exercises or
not. Aleksey Manvelyan, a BBC correspondent in Yerevan, quoted the head
of the Armenian Defence Ministry press service, Seyran Shakhsuvaryan,
as saying that the Armenians will not come to Azerbaijan.
[Manvelyan, by phone, in Azeri] According to the latest reports,
the Armenian officers will not attend the NATO military exercises due
in Azerbaijan today. Five officers of the Armenian armed forces have
been waiting for a decision from the Azerbaijani embassy in Tbilisi
since last week in order to visit Azerbaijan. According to a report
we received today, the Armenian officers have not been allowed to
visit Baku. The press secretary of the Armenian Defence Ministry,
Seyran Shakhsuvaryan, said that US representatives in NATO had been
tackling the issue of visas for the Armenian officers.
[Armenian Foreign Minister Vardan Oskanyan is to meet NATO
Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer in Brussels on 13 September to
discuss the Azerbaijani decision not to allow the Armenian officers
to attend the exercises, Armenian news agency Mediamax reported on
the 13th (Yerevan, in Russian 0520 gmt).]