Posted on 05/09/2002 7:32:34 PM PDT by Spar
Azerbaijan ready to liberate Karabakh
AFP [ TUESDAY, MAY 07, 2002 9:31:10 PM ]
BAKU: Azerbaijan's Defense Minister Safar Abbiyev said on Tuesday at a meeting with his Turkish counterpart he was ready to seize the Armenian-controlled enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh by force if necessary.
"The occupied territories are being used to supply weapons to terrorist organisations, for training terrorists and for the production and transit of illegal drugs," Abbiyev said in the Azeri capital, Baku.
"Azerbaijan's armed forces are ready to destroy those centres and liberate its territories," he added.
Azerbaijan fought a bitter war with Armenia in the early 1990's over Karabakh. A ceasefire was agreed in 1994 but Baku still demands the return of territory it says is illegally occupied by Armenia.
Abbiyev made the remarks at a meeting with Turkish Defense Minister Sabahattin Cakmakoglu, who is visiting Azerbaijan, a former Soviet republic, as part of a delegation of Turkish cabinet ministers.
Turkey, which has strong ethnic and political ties with Azerbaijan, "will support Baku on the question (of Karabakh), whatever decision it takes," Cakmakoglu told his Azeri counterpart.
Ankara is enforcing an economic embargo on its neighbour Armenia and says it will continue to do so until it cedes Karabakh to Azerbaijan.
Both Turkey and Azerbaijan claim that the enclave is being used as a base by the outlawed Kurdish separatist group, the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK.
Also at their meeting, Abbiyev and Cakmakoglu discussed joint measures to create a "security corridor" to protect the planned Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline which will export Azeri crude oil to the Turkish Mediterranean.
The real reason for it all.
People forget the pogrom of Christians that happened in Baku when Azerbaijan left the USSR. The streets were full of Aremnian dead. The Armenians of Karabakh were forced to defend themselves. A leading Azeri general at the time fighting against the Armenians was the now late Khattab, of the al-Qaida group before he moved on to Chechnya.
I hope the Armenian lobby in Washington has enough clout to keep the State Dept honest.
Azerbaijan has been racked by civil war since the anti-Armenian pogrom in February 1988 and the emergence of the Azerbaijani Popular Front in 1989, which organised strikes and launched progroms against Russians and Armenians. The Red Army intervened to protect Russian nationals and did not leave until March 1992. In May 1991, the Armenian enclave of Nagorno-Kharabakh declared itself independent in the face of growing threats from the Azeris, and declared that the laws of the USSR applied within the new Republic. The Azeri government duly launched a war to crush the rebellion. and in the wake of the failed Moscow coup, Azerbaijan declared itself independent of the USSR and refused to join the C.I.S..
In June 1992, Abulfaz Elchibey was elected President. Elchibey was a “Pan-Turkish” academic who had been jailed as a dissident in the 1970s. His regime was marked by widespread corruption, alienation of national minorities, and Elchibey personally won a reputation for drunkenness.
The war with Armenia over the enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh which has a mainly Armenian population proved disastrous for Azerbaijan, which despite its numerical superiority was given a whipping by the Armenians. This humiliation in turn triggered bitter armed recriminations among the Azeris.
A rebellion was led by Geidar Aliyev who had been First Secretary of the Republic’s Communist Party. As troops marched on Baku, Elchibey fled by helicopter to the Azeri enclave of Nakhichevan on the Iranian/Turkish border, cut off from the rest of Azerbaijan by Armenia. While Turkey and Iran still recognised Elchibey as the only legitimate leader, Elchibey received a stunning 97.5% vote of no confidence in a popular referendum, and Aliyev’s government eventually received reluctant international recognition.
With 20 million ethnic Azeris across the Iranian border threatening to ignite the age-old hostility between the Christian Armenians and Turkey and Iran who have persecuted their own Armenian minorities for centuries, there were plenty of people anxious to see the Azeri-Armenian conflict sorted out a soon as possible. Aliyev, a former member of the Politburo of the CPSU, moved to re-establish friendly relationships with Moscow to put an end to the fighting.
Azerbaijan is one of the smallest of the Republics, but is the main supplier of meat to Russia.
It was not just Khattab who was leading mujehadin against the Kharabakh Armenians, but Basayev himself!!! (The link is to an interview with Basayev on an Azerbaijani TV station last year.) So the Chechen bandits have their fingers all over this one!!!! So much for those who consider the bandits "freedom fighters"!!!!
As for the Kharabakh situation itself, the NWO/NATO has been acting against Armenian Christians by another phony "peace process" like the ones in Kosovo, Bosnia, FYR Macedonia, and the Holy Land. The Armenians just about HAD THAT WAR WON, but our mis-leaders have been favoring the muslim side as usual. There's even talk of admitting Azerbaijan to NATO!
Let the Armenian tanks roll once again--all over the muslim takeover artists who wish to destoy any independent Christian nation in what they consider "muslim lands". And let the Serbian tanks roll into Kosovo once more, and root out the KLA terrorists and their international jihadist "helpers" from the Serbian holy land!!!!
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