Azeri parliament to send factfinding mission to Georgia – speaker
Trend news agency
7 Dec 04
Baku, 7 December: Let the Georgian administration know that its incomes
as a sovereign state will depend on the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) and
the Baku-Tbilisi-Erzurum oil and gas pipeline projects, Azerbaijani
Parliament Speaker Murtuz Alasgarov said in parliament today.
“Let them know that Azerbaijan has always maintained friendly relations
with Georgia and we are still in favour of that. There are up to
500,000 ethnic Azerbaijanis living in Georgia. And Azerbaijanis will
live in this land,” the speaker said.
Alasgarov added that not a single ethnic Azerbaijani is currently
involved in the construction of BTC on the territory of Georgia and
no-one has received a plot of land, while ethnic Armenians have
received theirs. This issue perturbs the Azerbaijani side a lot,
the speaker added. He said a Milli Maclis [Azerbaijani parliament]
commission of four MPs would be set up to investigate the developments
unfolding in Georgia. The commission will be sent to Georgia on a
factfinding mission and prepare a report for the Milli Maclis. The
report will also be submitted to the presidents of the two countries.
It must be remembered that a woman was killed and several people
received various severe wounds as a result of an armed conflict
in the village of Asagi Guslar in Georgia’s Marneuli District last
week. The incident occurred between employees of a local stud farm
and ethnic Azerbaijanis who were protesting against the use of land
by the horse breeding factory. The Georgian Ministry of Internal
Affairs has instituted criminal proceedings into the incident.