Azeri Foreign Ministry to protest population census in Karabakh
Bilik Dunyasi news agency
24 Nov 04
Baku, 24 November: The Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry intends to protest
the decision of the government in the so-called Nagornyy Karabakh
Republic NKR to conduct a census of the population there in 2005. The
census should not be held until the Karabakh conflict is resolved,
the Azerbaijani side believes.
The national statistics service of the “NKR” says that 146,592 people
lived in Nagornyy Karabakh as of 1 October 2004. However, specialists
from the Azerbaijani State Statistics Committee believe that the
Armenian side distorted the figures for political and economic reasons.
According to the latest census of the population in the “NKR”,
120,000 people lived in Karabakh in 1999. Therefore, the Azerbaijani
statistics committee thinks it is unlikely that almost 27,000 people
have volunteered to move to this conflict zone over the past five
years. It is more likely that the figures are inaccurate, statistics
experts say.
Passage omitted: repetition