LAYING THE BLAME ELSEWHERE

Two prestigious international events - the 7th General Assembly of the International Conference of Asian Political Parties (ICAPP) and the 40th plenary session of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Black Sea Economic Cooperation Organization (PABSEC) - were held in Baku towards the end of November.

Both events, according to the organizers, were a success, with specific decisions being taken on the questions put up for discussion. But it would have been strange if Armenia had not tried to detract from the political importance of an event in Azerbaijan and the significance of the decisions adopted thereat.

So the Armenian delegation did not take part in the 40th session of the Parliamentary Assembly of the BECO, either stating that no-one had invited them to Azerbaijan or claiming that Baku had not given them any written guarantees of security. Even more ludicrous were Yerevan's subsequent protestations that the invitation to take part in the Baku session of the PABSEC had been lost in the office of the speaker of the Armenian parliament. 

But later it was revealed that the invitation to the Armenians had been sent in August. And, as PABSEC's Secretary General Kirill Tretyak noted, Yerevan had confirmed its receipt. Furthermore, as Asaf Haciyev, PABSEC's deputy chairman, explained, the invitation stated that there were no problems regarding the security of the Armenian delegation.

"However, a week ago the speaker of the Armenian parliament suddenly stated that he had not received any invitation," Haciyev said. But the day before the event the Armenians expressed their intention to take part in the session, and they asked for written guarantees of their security for the time they were in Azerbaijan.

"Azerbaijan guarantees the security of all the participants. If anyone thinks that our doors are closed to the Armenians, last week the chairman of the Armenian "Heritage" Party took part in a forum of Asian political parties in Baku," the Azerbaijani MP recalled.

Meanwhile, the chairman of "Heritage", former Armenian foreign minister Raffi Ovanisyan, not only took part in the 7th General Assembly of the International Conference of Asian Political Parties in Baku, but also managed to cause a scandal there. The former Armenian foreign minister was not happy about the Baku declaration of the conference which said that ICAPP supports Azerbaijan's territorial integrity and the UN Security Council's adoption of a resolution on the occupied territories.

In an attempt to voice his protest Ovanisyan took the platform and began to express his complaints. The response of the audience was to interrupt Ovanisyan's "speech" by banging on the table, thereby making it clear that his protest was without foundation. As well as his attempt to cast a shadow over the objectivity of the ICAPP declaration, Ovanisyan is also best remembered for his provocative statements such as "a large part of Armenian lands are also under Turkish and Azerbaijani occupation", or "the reason for the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict is Azerbaijan's aggression against the people of Karabakh". Despite such attacks, the Armenian delegate's security was still guaranteed at the highest level.

In these last few days the Armenian media has been spreading a statement by the president of the Armenian Boxing Federation, Derenik Gabrielyan, which is rather indicative in this context. "When we were in Azerbaijan everything possible was done for our security. We should do the same and ensure their safety, too," he said in the run-up to the world youth championships that are opening in Yerevan.

So, the bottom line is that the refusal of the Armenian representatives to take part in the events in Baku was merely an attempt to demonstrate the existence of Armenophobia in Azerbaijan or to present the situation as Baku's reluctance to accept the Armenian delegation. And this would have been a small loss were not such behaviour typical of Armenia's whole policy in the question of a settlement to the Nagornyy Karabakh conflict.

Refusing to carry out the resolutions of the UN Security Council and other international organizations, Armenia is at the same time concocting new pretexts in order to tone down its destructiveness. Yerevan uses such pretexts today as "Azerbaijan's militarization and bellicose rhetoric", and the so-called "Safarov case", referring to an Azerbaijani officer who, unable to put up with an insult extended to the Azerbaijani flag, killed an Armenian officer in Budapest while in a state of acute emotional distress. After serving punishment of nearly ten years he was extradited in the summer to his homeland by the Hungarian authorities and pardoned by Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev.

If you pick up reports about the recent visit by the co-chairs of the Minsk group of the OSCE, you will see that practically everyone the mediators met in Armenia and in occupied Nagornyy Karabakh referred to the "Safarov case", the glorification of which in Azerbaijan allegedly undermined the slim hope of creating an atmosphere of trust between the sides. At the same time, Yerevan forgets that Safarov was a man who had lost his loved ones and friends, as well as his home, as a result of Armenian aggression, and the man he killed was not a peace-loving man, but an Armenian serviceman who had insulted his military honour. Armenia itself is run by a man who admits his participation in the slaughter of the peaceful Azerbaijani population, women, children and old people. Not to mention the glorification in Armenia of such internationally recognized terrorists as Monte Melkonyan and Zori Balayan, who proudly recall how they scalped an Azerbaijani child and others. Nevertheless, none of this prevents official Baku from having talks with Yerevan for the sake of achieving peace, although Azerbaijan has every possibility and a sovereign right to liberate its territories by military means.

So, the margins of constructiveness and destructiveness in the Armenia-Azerbaijan question are extremely clear, and so long as a spade is not called a spade, Armenia will continue to lay all the blame elsewhere with impunity, dragging out the status quo, which is unacceptable to the whole world and above all for the region.

And meanwhile, as Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov, said, the November talks of the co-chairs of the OSCE's Minsk group in Armenia give no grounds for optimism.