HUNDREDS PROTEST AZERBAIJANI LEADER’S VISIT TO FRANCE

Expatica
Sept 18 2012
France

Hundreds of French Armenians protested in Paris Tuesday to denounce
a visit by Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev after Baku’s widely
condemned pardoning of a soldier who hacked an Armenian to death.

Aliyev’s visit to Paris, during which he met President Francois
Hollande and attended the opening of a wing of Islamic art at the
Louvre, comes after Baku faced intense international criticism for
its decision to pardon Ramil Safarov following his extradition to
Azerbaijan from Hungary.

Gathered across the street from Azerbaijan’s embassy in Paris, about
600 protesters chanted “Aliyev the fascist, out of France!” and waved
placards reading “France is hosting a criminal”.

“Aliyev’s arrival in France 18 days after he pardoned the murderer
Safarov is not acceptable,” Franck Papazian, co-president of the CCAF
umbrella organisation of French Armenian groups, said at the protest.

Protesters also denounced the government’s acceptance of money from
Azerbaijan to help fund the new Islamic art wing at the Louvre,
which brings together 18,000 treasures from an area spanning from
Europe to India.

The 100 million euro ($131 million) project was funded by the French
government and supported by endowments from Azerbaijan, Saudi Arabia,
Morocco, Kuwait and Oman.

In a statement after their meeting at the Elysee Palace, Hollande
said he had “called on Azerbaijan to take the necessary measures to
re-establish a climate of confidence with Armenia” in order to pursue
peace talks.

Safarov was pardoned, promoted and financially rewarded after being
extradited to Azerbaijan from Hungary, where he had been serving a
life sentence for killing an Armenian soldier with an axe during a
NATO training session in 2004.

Azerbaijan and Armenia remain bitter enemies and have not yet signed
a final peace deal since the 1994 ceasefire in their war over the
disputed region of Nagorny Karabakh.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress