Baku Today, Azerbaijan
May 8 2004
Police Stops Marching To Karabakh. Akif Naghi: `We Are Adamant To
Reach Frontline.’
Baku Today 08/05/2004 14:15
BAKU- Police cardoned off Martyr’ Alley on Saturday and prevented
several hundred members of the Karabakh Liberation Organization (KLO)
to start their unauthorized march to Shusha, a main Azeri-populated
town in Nagorno-Karabakh that was captured by Armenian troops on May
8, 1992.
`This once again displays the attitude of the Azerbaijani authorities
to the Karabakh problem,’ the KLO leader Akif Naghi, surrounded by
police officers, told reporters, while the marchers were chanting
`Karabakh!’ `Karabakh or Death!’ `Those who made the decision [to
stop the marchers] will feel sorry for this in the future.’
The KLO leader said that the Azerbaijanis driven out from their homes
by Armenians have a desire to return and no one can prevent them from
doing this.
`We should at the very least reach the frontline,’ the KLO leader
said, explaining the `march is not our goal but just a means to reach
our goal of liberating Karabakh.’
Naghi said now that the authorities prevented them to start the
action from Baku, they are planning to leave the city in smaller
groups and join somewhere outside of the capital to continue walking
towards the frontline.
The KLO leader said the peace negotiations mediated by OSCE’s Minsk
group since 1992 are aimed at making the Azerbaijani people gradually
forget Nagorno-Karabakh.
`Shusha and Karabakh mean the fate of the Azerbaijani state,’ Naghi
stressed. `Without these, there can be no statehood in Azerbaijan.’