Posted on 12/15/2003 9:45:39 AM PST by RussianConservative
BAKU - Today, the former president of Azerbaijan, Geydar Aliyev, will be buried in Baku. He died on Friday in Cleveland, United States. The coffin with his body arrived in Baku yesterday. Aliyev will be buried in the Alley of Honorable Burials near his wife, who died in 1985.
President Vladimir Putin will take part in the funeral, along with Leonid Kuchma, the president of Ukraine; Akhmet Nedjet Sether, the president of Turkey; leader of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbayev; and Nino Burdjanadze, acting president of Georgia.
The Ajeri government announced an official mourning period of seven days. More than a million people are expected to come to the funeral.
According to experts, Izvestia reports, the death of Aliyev will not bring serious changes in Russia-Ajeri relations if Moscow is sufficiently active in maintaining them. Still, they say, there is a chance that the situation in Azerbaijan will become destabilized.
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