AZERBAIJAN’S FIRST LADY’S INFLUENCE ON THE RISE
YEREVAN, APRIL 12, ARMENPRESS: Armenian foreign affairs minister
Vartan Oskanian is set to have his first meeting with his newly
appointed Azerbaijani counterpart, Elmar Mamedyarov, next Friday in
Prague at a meeting of the OSCE Minsk group, but it is still not clear
if Steven Mann, Washington’s special representative to the Caspian Sea
region, who was picked last week to replace the current co-chairman
Rudolph Perina will represent the US, as State Department has not yet
officially announced Mann’s appointment.
The news about replacing Perina was revealed last Wednesday by
theU.S. ambassador in Baku Reno Harnish, who was quoted by Azeri mass
media as saying that he hopes that the appointment will give a new
impetus to the stalled Armenian-Azerbaijani peace talks.
Elmar Mamedyarov, a former ambassador to Italy, was appointed to
replace Azerbaijan’s Vilayat Guliev. A career diplomat, Mamedyarov, a
native of Azerbaijan’s autonomous region of Nakhichevn, the
birth-place of president Ilham Aliyev, has been serving at the foreign
ministry for 11 years and is said to have been promoted to his current
post by Azerbaijan’s ambassador to the USA, Pashayev, a relative of
Ilham Aliyev’s wife, a fact that allowed the London-based Institute of
War and Peace to conclude that the influence of Azerbaijan’s first
lady is on the rise.
In a Friday interview with the Russian Itar-Tass Mamedyarov
reiterated his government’s official position that it will never agree
to Karabagh’s independence or its joining Armenia. In a reference to
his upcoming meeting with Oskanian, he said it will be an occasion to
become acquainted with his Armenian counterpart and a forum for free
discussions.