ORGANIZATION OF THE ISLAMIC CONFERENCE TAKES AIM AT ARMENIA

EurasiaNet
May 20 2010
NY

The Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) — a club of Muslim
countries that features Azerbaijan among its 57 members — has declared
Armenia the aggressor in the 22-year Azerbaijani-Armenian conflict
over the breakaway region of Nagorno Karabakh.

The resolution, adopted at a May 19 OIC meeting in Dushanbe, will be
the foundation of Karabakh discussions planned at the Organization’s
2011 summit in Cairo, Egypt. "We must keep raising the issue of Nagorno
Karabakh at the OIC meetings, or else we will make a step back,"
declared Azerbaijan’s Ambassador to Saudi Arabia Tofik Abdulayev.

The Organization also adopted two other Karabakh resolutions
that deplore the alleged destruction of Azerbaijani monuments on
Armenian-controlled territory and call for aiding the conflict’s
Azerbaijani victims.

Armenian officials have not commented to international media about the
resolutions, but delivered a jab the day the OIC resolutions came out.

The Karabakh peace process has failed because Azerbaijan has shot down
each proposal that comes from American, Russian and French mediators,
argued Armenian Deputy Foreign Minister Shavarsh Kocharian.

"[A]n impression is being created that Baku is holding talks with
itself, arrives at some acceptable decisions for itself and tries to
present its own wish as the result of the negotiations," the peeved
Kocharian charged.