Associated Press Worldstream
November 4, 2004 Thursday 11:41 AM Eastern Time
Six activists detained in Azerbaijan capital protesting upcoming NATO
seminar
BAKU, Azerbaijan
Police detained six activists on Thursday for holding an unauthorized
demonstration outside Azerbaijan’s parliament to protest the presence
of Armenian officers at a NATO seminar scheduled for later this month.
About 40 activists of the Organization of Karabakh Freedom gathered
outside the legislature carrying signs “Armenian criminals, get out of
here!” Other signs called on NATO to refrain from inviting Armenian
officers to Baku and urged Azerbaijanis to protest Armenian
representatives’ participation.
The seminar of NATO’s parliamentary assembly is to take place in Baku
on November 26-28.
Armenia and Azerbaijan are at odds over the Nagorno-Karabakh enclave,
which ethnic Armenian forces seized from Azerbaijan in the early 1990s
in a war that killed 30,000 people and left about one million homeless.
A 1994 cease-fire has largely held, but no final settlement has been
reached.
Neither Armenia nor Azerbaijan is a NATO member, but both former Soviet
republics participate in NATO’s Partnership for Peace program.