"MEGAFON" PROBLEM

Although Azerbaijan has issued numerous warnings, some foreign companies are still cooperating with separatists in the Armenian-occupied territories of Azerbaijan. We can confidently say that Russian business is well ahead in this partnership. One of Russia's cellular operators - Megafon - has been reported to be involved in such illegal activities. It turns out that since 2002, the company has been persistent in its attempts to establish cooperation with Karabakh Telecom, a company that has been successfully working on the communications market in Nagornyy Karabakh.

Megafon provides millions of its customers with an international roaming link to the only cellular operator in Karabakh - Karabakh Telecom. It is not difficult to find it out - it is enough to look at the Megafon-Moscow official website which links to Karabakh Telecom. Nagornyy Karabakh is presented as a separate unit here, but unlike other cellular operators cooperating with the separatist entity, the Megafon website does not highlight the "NKR" as a separate country. The company is shown as part of Armenia. But this is not everything. In its block of commercials, Megafon recently presented a map where the whole territory of Azerbaijan was shown as part of Armenia.

Name swap does not change the meaning

The founder of the closed-type joint-stock company Karabakh Telecom is a Lebanese millionaire of Armenian descent, Pierre Fattouch. In a very short period of time, the company managed to sign international roaming agreements with 57 operators from 37 countries of the world. Among the illegal partners of Karabakh Telecom are still companies that represent such countries as Armenia, Russia, Greece, Cyprus, the UAE, Kazakhstan, Italy, Iran, Ukraine, Latvia, Lebanon, Denmark, Britain and so on.

However, Azerbaijan's intervention failed plans to expand roaming links with other companies, join the international GSM association and illegally provide international communication services. At the request of the Azerbaijani side, Karabakh Telecom was expelled from the association. For this reason, Armenia decided to take a roundabout route. K-Telecom (VivaCell brand) was registered in Armenia. Pierre Fattouch became its chairman and Ralf Eyrikyan its director-general. During the presentation of K-Telecom, Armenian Minister of Justice David Arutynyan said: "Azerbaijan tried to deprive Karabakh of access to the rest of the world, but we did not let this happen. So the decision to include K-Telecom in Armenia's telecommunications market was dictated by strategic considerations."

We have to say that the Armenian government partly managed to ensure that numerous companies from more than 60 countries of the world are sure that they are cooperating not with separatists, but with the most important cellular company of Armenia itself. In November 2004, K-Telecom was announced by the Armenian government the winner of a tender for mobile services on the 900 MHz frequency. Thus, Karabakh Telecom president Ralf Eyrikyan ensured that his company is announced the second mobile operator in Armenia.

Apart from Megafon, the "disgraceful" list of Karabakh Telecom partners also mentions Rostelecom and MTS (Mobile Telesystems limited liability company, Russia). If you click on the link to international roaming on the MTS website, you will see that this major Russian company is cooperating with both Armenian satellite companies Thuraya and ArmenTel, and K-Telecom. On 3 August 2005, the reputable international company Alcatel announced the signing of a major contract, worth millions of dollars, on the construction of a GSM/GPRS network for K-Telecom. Needless to say, these are not the only examples?

Fighting at all fronts

We have to emphasize that since 2003, the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry and Ministry of Communications and Information Technology have done a great deal of work to discredit Karabakh Telecom and K-Telecom in the eyes of the international community. The argument is simple: from a logical point of view, not a single company has the right to work in Nagornyy Karabakh which is an integral part of Azerbaijani territory and is occupied by Armenian aggressors.

We have already gained a partial victory owing to the efforts of the Azerbaijani diplomatic corps. After a note of protest sent by the Azerbaijani embassy in Uzbekistan to the Uzbek Foreign Ministry, the Uzdunrobita company gave up on the services of the "Karabakh" company. Later in May 2005, diplomats from the Azerbaijani embassy in Kiev persuaded Kyivstar - a major cellular company in Ukraine - to remove Karabakh Telecom and the word "Armenia" from all its information materials and blocks of commercials as a mention of the country where the company is operating.

But unfortunately, this is not the full list as it also mentions companies like AS EMT (Estonia), Bitel Ltd. (Kyrgyzstan), CosmOTE - Mobile Telecommunications S.A. (Greece), ETISALAT (UAE), Globe Telecom (Philippines), GSM Kazakhstan Ltd (Kazakhstan), H3G (Italy), OMNITEL (Lithuania), Orange A/S (Denmark), SwissCom Mobile Ltd. (Switzerland) and so on.

Karabakh Telecom still continues to conclude roaming agreements with many countries of the world, including CIS countries. The Azerbaijani Ministry of Communications and Information Technology is closely following events and doing everything possible in this sphere. It also informs companies cooperating with Karabakh Telecom about all facts which show that this cooperation is illegal. But in this situation, we have to be patient enough, because unfortunately, this problem cannot be solved in the blink of an eye," Azerbaijani Minister of Commu-nications and Information Tech-nology Ali Abbasov told R+.

Meanwhile, we found out from reliable sources that the ministry has given necessary recommendations to Azerbaijani mobile operators regarding cooperation with Megafon. In some way, we can understand that the ministry is talking about the reconsideration of business relations with a company that provides roaming services to the separatist entity in Nagornyy Karabakh.

We have to note that two of Azerbaijan's three mobile operators - Azercell and Bakcell - are cooperating with Megafon. Their representatives told our correspondent off-the-record that the issue of cooperation with Megafon is being studied now.

Do we learn from our mistakes?

It is not surprising that this is not the first incident involving Megafon. A Megafon block of commercials which was recently broadcast on a number of Russian TV channels demonstrated a computer-generated geographic map which showed the whole territory of Azerbaijan as part of Armenia. The Azerbaijani capital Baku was not shown either, whereas the area that was presented as Armenia showed not only its modern capital, but also the medieval city of Armavir.

The Azerbaijani embassy in Russia immediately asked the Megafon management to eliminate the distortions that were made in the commercial. The company management immediately reacted to the appeal from the diplomatic mission and stopped broadcasting the commercial on television on 18 July this year.

At the same time, Megafon offered an apology and expressed "sincere regret in connection with the inaccuracies on the geographic map in the block of commercials". The company also said in its letter that the company management thanks the embassy for its appeal and stresses that "this situation is a misunderstanding and is not a deliberate distortion of factual information regarding the territorial integrity, sovereignty and internationally-recognized borders of the Azerbaijan Republic". However, Megafon did not stop cooperating with Karabakh Telecom either…

Inhumane approach to lawlessness

How about Karabakh Telecom? It still lives and flourishes. First, dozens of millions of US dollars are being invested in cellular communications in the "NKR". Very few people know that one of the services of Karabakh Telecom is the development of Internet in the separatist entity.

Moreover, there are plans to digitalize automatic telephone stations in Stepanakert (our Xankandi), and it is Karabakh Telecom again that will help the "NKR government" with this "good intention". The company promised to provide all schools with a free link in 2005. Another "service" of the company is the implementation of "a number of humanitarian programmes in some districts of the republic". At the same time, Karabakh Telecom continues to carry out a colossal volume of work to develop the infrastructure of the "NKR" and expand economic cooperation with the rest of the world.

But Baku will continue sending protest notes to various countries of the world and demand an end to cooperation with Karabakh as it "violates the territorial integrity of the country", the Foreign Ministry told R+. The Azerbaijani embassy in Russia has already promised to investigate Megafon's illegal cooperation with Karabakh Telecom and take appropriate measures.

Incidentally, in response to accusations, representatives of the "NKR" government always stress that first, "Baku's efforts to discredit the development of the Nagornyy Karabakh economy are surprising", and second, "the efforts of our government ("NKR") are aimed at creating an optimal investment climate of which companies from a number of countries can take advantage as they are confident in mutually beneficial cooperation". A spokesman for the press service of the "NKR" government once said: "Karabakh Telecom is one of the biggest investors which carefully honours all its obligations before the state. We should not forget that an effective system of communications is an effective factor for establishing relations between states and peoples, creating an atmosphere of trust and it is anti-humane to create obstacles to its work." No comment…