Agence France Presse — English
November 5, 2004 Friday 12:56 PM GMT
NATO chief tells Azerbaijan to turn page in relations with Armenia
BAKU
NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer Friday told Azerbaijan to
“turn a page” in its relations with arch rival Armenia, its Caucasus
neighbor with which it remains in a state of war.
“At a certain stage you’ll have to turn a page,” de Hoop Scheffer said
as he continued a tour of the Caucasus.
De Hoop Scheffer spoke as he prepared to fly out of oil-rich
Azerbaijan, where he met with President Ilham Aliyev, to neighboring
Armenia to hold talks with its President Robert Kocharian.
The former Soviet republics of Azerbaijan and Armenia fought a war in
the 1990s, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, over
Nagorno-Karabakh, an ethnic Armenican enclave in Azeri territory.
A cease fire agreement was signed in 1994 with Nagorno-Karabakh
effectively remaining in Armenian hands, but with Baku still claiming
rights to it. The two sides have yet to sign a peace treaty and
formally remain in a state of war.
In September, Azerbaijan refused to let officers from Armenia take part
in NATO-sponsored war games on its territory. The games were called off
as a result.
“These kind of activities should be accessible for anybody and
everybody,” De Hoop Scheffer said Friday. “My advice would be if there
is Armenian representation, what is a better way … to discuss these
fundamental problems. Let the Azeri voice be heard also in the presence
of (Armenians).”
The war between Armenia and Azerbaijan killed an estimated 35,000
people and displace close to one million.
Years of negotiations chaired by the so-called Minsk group — chaired
by France, Russia and the United States and operating under a mandate
from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe — have
failed to find a solution and today no transport or communication lines
link the two neighbors.
Nagorno-Karabakh “is a big problem which has created a lot of suffering
already for much too many years and which urgently needs a solution,”
De Hoop Scheffer said.
The NATO chief arrived in Baku from neighboring Georgia, where he met
with President Mikhail Saakashvili, who aims to join the alliance
within four years.