EX-SECURITY CHIEF TOPS POLLS FOR NAGORNY KARABAKH PRESIDENCY
RIA Novosti, Russia
July 20, 2007
STEPANAKERT, July 20 (RIA Novosti) – The un-confirmed results of
Thursday’s presidential elections in Nagorny Karabakh, a secessionist
republic in Azerbaijan, gave a landslide victory to the region’s
former security chief.
Bako Saakyan, 47, garnered 85.42% of votes, followed by Deputy Foreign
Minister Masis Mailyan, with 12.21%. Election authorities put the
turnout in the small mountainous region, home to about 140,000,
at 77.36%.
Legislator Armen Abgaryan received 1.26%, Communist Party leader
Grant Melkumyan received 0.8% of votes, and university professor
Vanya Avanesyan picked up just 0.3%.
The region, whose population is dominated by ethnic Armenians, declared
its independence from the Soviet Republic of Azerbaijan in 1988,
three years before the collapse of the Soviet Union, in a bid to join
the Armenian Republic. Over 30,000 people were killed on both sides
between 1988 and 1994, and over 100 died following a 1994 ceasefire.
Incumbent President Arkady Gukasyan, whose second term expires in
August, refused to run for a third presidential term, although experts
have said that this is not prohibited by the breakaway republic’s
Constitution.
A candidate must receive 50% of votes to be elected president. If no
candidates pass this threshold, the two leading candidates run in a
second round two weeks later.
Azerbaijan’s Foreign Ministry condemned the election in the
self-proclaimed republic as an attempt to cover up Armenia’s policy
aimed at occupying and annexing Azerbaijani territories.
The ministry said the election was held in breach of Azerbaijan’s
Constitution and international law, as it disenfranchised the
Azerbaijani minority in Nagorny Karabakh.
Since the conflict, Nagorny Karabakh has remained under the control
of the Armenian majority, but tensions between Azerbaijan and Armenia
have persisted, and Azerbaijan is still determined to restore its
control over the separatist region.
Anne Derse, the United States ambassador to Azerbaijan, said the
U.S. government recognized neither the election nor the republic’s
independence.
Similar statements of non-recognition have been issued by Rene van der
Linden, the president of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council
of Europe, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe,
the European Union, the Council of Ministers of the GUAM (a grouping
of four former Soviet republics – Georgia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan and
Moldova),and Turkey’s government.