Serbian footballer to try out at Yerevan club
June 29, 2013
Serbian football player MiloÅ¡ StamenkoviÄ? will try out at Ararat FC of
Armenia’s capital city Yerevan.
The 23-year-old central defender has arrived in the city.
StamenkoviÄ? was playing for FK BSK BorÄ?a of the Serbian SuperLiga.
Prior to BorÄ?a, however, he played for FK Proleter Novi Sad.
NEWS.am Sport
Serzh Sargsyan receives delegation of Armenian Missionary Association of America
16:25 29/06/2013 » SOCIETY
President Serzh Sargsyan received a delegation of the Armenian
Missionary Association of America (AMAA) led by Executive Director
Levon Filian.
The representatives of AMAA presented to Serzh Sargsyan programs
implemented by the Association in Armenia, Nagorno-Karabakh and over
two dozen countries of the world as well as the future projects,
underscoring that they are ready to carry on with their duty in
Motherland and abroad to address problems facing the Armenian nation,
cooperating on that with all interested parties.
They also noted that the Armenian Missionary Association of America
has been implementing programs in most diverse areas, such as
education, healthcare, agriculture and others, paying particular
attention to education. From the very beginning, this 95-year-old
organization’s mission has had the social assistance component, and
according to its representatives, today they are switching from
charity to development programs in cooperation with other
establishments with the similar mission.
The President of Armenia wished all the best to the Armenian
Missionary Association of America in the implementation of their
projects, presidential press service reported.
Source: Panorama.am
Vision of the Islamic Republic of Iran Ardabil Provincial TV
June 29 2013
Iranian cleric meets Azerbaijani activists, discusses Karabakh issue
Members of the Azerbaijani Karabakh Liberation Organization have
visited the ethnic Azari-populated town of Ardabil and met the Supreme
Leader’s representative in the province, Hojjat ol-Eslam val Moslemin
Ameli, provincial TV reported on 28 June.
According to the provincial Sabalan TV, the visit was aimed at
coordinating issues linked to the Karabakh conference to be held in
Tabriz, the capital of Iran’s East Azarbayjan Province, on 23 October
– 21 November 2013.
At the meeting, Ameli described Karabakh as part of Azerbaijani
territory and the Islamic world. “The liberation of Karabakh should
not take much time, but this will become more difficult as time
passes,” Ameli said.
Mentioning the West’s policies aimed at disintegrating Islamic
countries, he said that “the government and people of Azerbaijan
mistakenly assume that they would be able to take Karabakh back
through cooperation with America, because this issue does not meet
America’s interests and they will never do this”.
He described the formation of a government and leadership in
Azerbaijan, which would rely only on its own forces, as the only way
of taking Karabakh back and said that “if the Azerbaijani government
shows a strong will for taking Karabakh back, the Iranian people and
government will support them”.
“The future of every ethnic group and nation is in its own hands and
the people of Azerbaijan can defend their country and religion only
through the culture of heroism and martyrdom. God helps and blesses
only the warriors of God,” Ameli said
Ardabil TV website (Ardabil.irib.ir) also reported on the meeting.
According to the report, Ameli also said, that “through the
discernment in the upcoming presidential election, the Azerbaijani
people should elect a government, which should be from the people and
for the people so that it could be able to take steps on the path of
the liberation of Karabakh with the help of people”.
The website reported that speaking about the Azerbaijani government’s
will, Ameli said that “unfortunately, such a will has not been
witnessed from the Azerbaijani authorities over the past several
years, and even during the Karabakh occupation, Iranian fighters, who
went to the region to help them, were withdrawn from Azerbaijan on
charges of espionage after the Westerners’ provocations”.
[Translated from Persian]
The Toronto Star, Canada
June 30, 2013 Sunday
Ann Cavoukian: privacy commissioner’s job `my life’s work’
For Ontario’s privacy commissioner, work is her greatest pride and her
commitment to freedom is a personal tribute to her Armenian forebears.
By:Jim CoyleNews, Published on Fri Jun 28 2013
It says something about Ann Cavoukian’s energy and work ethic that
when she was recovering from neurosurgery a few years back she added
to her onerous workload as Ontario’s information and privacy
commissioner the Sunday hobby of learning to paint.
It helped her “chill” a bit, she says. “I just started playing with
it.” Now, her work is sufficiently accomplished that one painting
fronts her Christmas cards each year and others adorn the walls of her
office.
Ann Cavoukian is a slight, vivacious force of nature. Now 60, she is
finishing up a third term as commissioner and, in about a year, will
leave the office in which she’s spent a quarter-century and which
she’s built into the best of its kind in the world.
Cavoukian – who speaks to the Pentagon and companies such as Google,
Adobe, Microsoft, Intel and IBM about information and privacy issues –
is justifiably proud of the work she’s done. But she has no intention
of retiring. Apparently, it isn’t in her family DNA. There will be a
new gig. Cavoukians work.
It probably says something, meanwhile, about Dalton McGuinty’s famous
lack of people skills that, when he appeared last week before an
Ontario legislature committee, he slighted Cavoukian in the very area
in which she takes the most pride.
For his troubles, the former premier must have felt as if he’d poked
his nose into a beehive.
Deleted emails
McGuinty was appearing for a second time before the committee
investigating his hugely expensive 2011 decision to relocate two gas
plants. His encore was required after the committee learned that
McGuinty’s senior political staffer had deleted virtually every email
or record related to the decision.
In April, Cavoukian had received a complaint from NDP MPP Peter Tabuns
that the former chief of staff to the former minister of energy in the
Liberal government had improperly deleted all emails related to the
cancellation of the plants in Mississauga and Oakville.
Cavoukian had no jurisdiction over the Ontario Archives and
Recordkeeping Act. But Tabuns made the logical point that the nub of
his complaint was about information – and there could be no access to
information if that information was not preserved.
So, “as a favour, as a service,” Cavoukian investigated.
And on June 5, she released a scathing report called “Deleting
Accountability: Records Management Practices of Political Staff.” She
said the act had been violated by more than one political staffer –
including the premier’s chief of staff – who deleted all emails
relating to the plants.
When she appeared before the committee last week, Cavoukian said “it
simply strained credulity that it could be for reasons other than
shielding one’s activities from public scrutiny.”
McGuinty followed her to the witness seat – and basically continued
the haplessness that marked his last 18 months in public office.
He said the legislation in question, which his own government passed
in 2006, was so Byzantine as to be unfathomable to mortal man. Then he
went a step too far.
“I have never heard from the information and privacy commissioner
about any dereliction of duty on the part of my office,” the former
premier sniffed.
In short order, Cavoukian was on CBC’s Power and Politics saying,
“please, this is not rocket science.”
There was not one email to be found regarding the gas plants from the
former chiefs of the staff to the former energy minister and former
premier, she said.
“Do you really think it’s acceptable to think you can delete
everything?” she asked. “By deleting everything, there’s absolutely no
opportunity for the public to scrutinize what you’ve done.”
What really got Cavoukian’s dander up, what was “astounding to me,”
was McGuinty’s suggestion that it was her job to brief his staff on
what they should or shouldn’t preserve and “that I have not fulfilled
my obligations.”
“To me, it hurt that he said, ‘Well, you know, she never spoke to us
about the Archives and Recordkeeping Act.’ Well, I didn’t do that
because I’m not supposed to. It’s not my job.”
Her job, she told the Star, she takes very seriously.
“We produce more reports here, more investigations, more
groundbreaking work than any other comparable office anywhere else in
the world. Just ask anyone.
“I often tell my team here, ‘So, what am I going to do for my second
shift tonight,’ which is after dinner? And they always give me a
package to take home. And I do it with great pleasure. I feel like
it’s my life’s work.”
In fact, Cavoukian considers it akin to the fulfilment of a family
legacy – the cherishing of freedom, and freedom’s twin bulwarks of
information and privacy.
“That’s their legacy to me: freedom.”
Started from scratch
Her Armenian grandfather escaped the genocide there in the early 1900s
and got his family out through his quick wits and skill as an artist.
(By way of thanks, he later restored the frescoes in a cathedral in
Jerusalem.)
The Cavoukians moved to Cairo, where there was a significant Armenian
community. There, her father became a celebrated portrait photographer
and Cavoukian and her two brothers (including the famed children’s
entertainer Raffi) were born.
She recalls being taken to the Pyramids most Sunday mornings as a
little girl, where there was a café at the base for adults and a
merry-go-round where the nannies took the children. “It was
beautiful.”
Life was apparently wonderful, at least until Gamal Abdel Nasser came
to power. Her father sensed trouble coming, not to mention the
conscription of his sons, and the family left “in the dead of the
night.”
“My mother always said, ‘We came here with eight suitcases, two
mothers (her mother and mother-in-law) and three children.’ So they
had to start from scratch.
“I just know that freedom was at the heart of everything they did, in
terms of why they brought us here. And that, to me, is their legacy to
me and that’s why this work is so important to me. This is what I do
for my parents, this is what I do for everyone. Freedom is so
essential.”
At the University of Toronto, Cavoukian earned a doctorate in
psychology and the law. She went to work at the attorney general’s
ministry and became head of research services. When Sidney Linden was
appointed Ontario’s first information and privacy commissioner in
1987, he hired Cavoukian – whom he had come to know through work on
the police services commission.
“I just jumped at it,” she said. There were only three people on staff
but the job offered the gratification of building something. Besides,
the world of computer technology – and the then-unimagined
implications for information and privacy – was just coming to life.
“We were very avant garde,” she says. “We all got PCs on our desks.
This was considered in 1988 to be a big deal.”
Cavoukian hadn’t anticipated staying at any job more than five years,
but “the beauty of this job is that it has changed every year.” She’s
dealt with everything from the security of medical information to
genetic testing, video surveillance to the biometric identification of
self-admitted problem gamblers at Ontario casinos.
“Thank God I’m married to an engineer,” she laughs.
In 1997, Cavoukian was appointed commissioner. And in the late ’90s
she developed her “Privacy by Design” concept to embed privacy into
the design of IT systems and processes. Now, it is the international
standard.
As she approaches her final year on the job, the deleted email affair
stands as the most difficult of her many investigations.
“This is the only one for which I’ve been called to testify before a
standing committee,” she says.
It’s worrisome to her that officers of the legislature – the
ombudsman, auditor-general, the information and privacy commissioner –
are increasingly being called to provide oversight in matters of
accountability and transparency, “ways that weren’t contemplated
perhaps before.”
“In a free and democratic society we rely on the public looking over
the shoulders of our government, making sure that we put them under
some kind of public scrutiny. By deleting emails, deleting records,
you are shielding yourself from public scrutiny . . . If we don’t have
that kind of ability, they can do whatever they want.”
Up on a shelf in her office, still, is a photograph of Cavoukian
standing with Dalton McGuinty. It’s inscribed, “To Ann, thank you.
Dalton.”
“It’s so sad,” she said. “It’s just such an unfortunate ending.”
ARMENIENS DE TURQUIE
Pour la première fois de l’Histoire, le Tribunal d’Istanbul va
condamner un Turc pour insulte envers les Arméniens
Petit évènement en Turquie. Pour la première fois de l’Histoire, le
Tribunal d’Istanbul va condamner un Turc, Yussuf Zahid Polat pour «
insultes blessantes » et « à caractère haineux » envers les Arméniens
Lévon et Artoun Balekdjioghlou. Information diffusée par le journal
turc Sabah. Le titre affirme que c’est la première fois qu’un tribunal
turc condamne un citoyen turc pour l’utilisation du terme « giavour »
(infidèle) envers un Arménien. Rappelons que le terme « giavour » que
les Turcs utilisent régulièrement à l’adresse des Arméniens est une
sorte d’insulte.
Lévon Balekdjioghlou et son fils Artoun avaient signé un contrat pour
entreprendre des travaux de la cantine d’une école. Ils avaient signé
le contrat avec un dénommé Feliz Ouyar. Mais le 21 avril dernier,
l’associé de Feliz Ouyar, un certain Yussuf Zahid Polat désirait
apporter dans la cantine scolaire, des clients extérieurs à
l’établissement. Essuyant l’opposition de Lévon et Artoun
Balekdjioghlou, qui avaient placé à l’entrée de la cantine un garde,
Kémal Batou, irrité, Yussuf Zahid Polat a crié en direction du garde «
ne deviens pas leur esclave, ce sont des Arméniens, des giavours. Hé
les Arméniens, ici c’est notre pays. Je vais vous tuer, je vais briser
vos pieds ». Quatre jours plus tard, Y. Polat redoublait ses menaces,
accompagné de son frère Mehmet. Le Tribunal d’Istanbul a instruit un
dossier de condamnation de Yussuf Polat et son frère qui risquent
selon la constitution turque de six mois à deux ans de prison.
Krikor Amirzayan
dimanche 30 juin 2013,
Krikor Amirzayan ©armenews.com
KARABAKH/ PRESIDENTE AZERO: NOI CONTINUIAMO AD ARMARCI
TMNews, Italia
26 giugno 2013
Aliev: noi ci stiamo rafforzando, l’Armenia si sta indebolendo
Roma, 26 giu. (TMNews) – L’Azerbaigian non smettera di rafforzare
la sua dotazione militare finche non verra risolta la questione
del Nagorno Karabakh, l’enclave di fatto indipendente occupata
dall’Armenia. L’ha affermato il presidente azero Ilham Aliev durante
una parata militare dedicata al 95mo anniversario delle forze armate
azere, secondo quanto quanto riferisce l’agenzia di stampa Interfax.
“Abbiamo avuto nel 2003 un budget della difesa di 163 milioni di
dollari nel 2003. E’ cresciuto a 3,6 miliardi di euro lo scorso anno
ed è a 3,7 miliardi di euro ora”, ha affermato il capo dello stato
azero. “In paragone – ha continuato – l’intera spesa dell’Armenia
(non solo per la difesa, ndr.) è di 2 miliardi di dollari. Il nostro
bilancio per la difesa, il doppio della spesa totale dell’Armenia”.
Dichiarazioni dure, mentre i negoziati per arrivare a una soluzione
pacifica del conflitto “congelato” che è costato decine di migliaia
di vite negli anni ’90 languono. Per questo motivo, il rischio che si
torni a fare ricorso alle armi è sempre presente e i contendenti le
evocano. “Un forte Azerbaigian – ha detto oggi Aliev – può parlare
qualsiasi lingua alla debole Armenia. Per ora, noi preferiamo i
negoziati per preservare la stabilita regionale, perche l’Azerbaigian
è il paese che stabilizza la regione. (…) Ma non è un segreto che
l’Azerbaigian si sta rafforzando giorno dopo giorno mentre l’Armenia
si sta indebolendo”.
NAGORNO KARABAKH: SUL FILO DELL’EQUILIBRIO INSTABILE
Termometro Politico, Italia
27 giugno 2013
Un conflitto derubricato
Il ponte dell’inimicizia che si estende tra Armenia ed Azerbaijan
porta il nome di Nagorno-Karabakh: una regione di appena undicimila
chilometri quadrati, abitata da meno di centocinquantamila persone,
di etnia prevalentemente armena.
Era il 1992 quando ad Helsinki il Segretario dell’Organizzazione per la
Sicurezza e la Cooperazione in Europa (che da questo momento chiameremo
semplicemente OSCE) inseriva tra le note dell’agenda internazionale
una Conferenza, da tenersi (solo presumibilmente) a Minsk, in merito
all’affaire del Nagorno. Al cd. Gruppo di Minsk, la cui Presidenza
è attualmente condivisa da tre Paesi, sono invitati a partecipare
Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bielorussia, Cecoslovacchia, Federazione Russa,
Francia, Germania, Italia, Stati Uniti, Svezia, Turchia e – in qualita
di parte interessata – anche i rappresentanti del Nagorno-Karabakh.
Ã~I di pochi giorni fa il meeting di Enniskillen (cittadina
dell’Irlanda del Nord), a seguito del quale i copresidenti del Gruppo
di Minsk hanno comunicato di continuare a credere con fermezza nella
strategia che il working group ha elaborato negli ultimi quattro anni,
in vista di una definitiva risoluzione del conflitto, che assumera
concretezza solo quando la popolazione sara capace di mettere in
disparte passati rancori.
In verita, la sensazione irritante con cui parte dell’opinione pubblica
ha accolto la neutralita delle dichiarazioni divulgate dalle agenzie di
stampa potrebbe trovare la sua raison d’être nell’ambiguo approccio
europeo alle problematiche dell’area caucasica. Ancora oggi non è
affatto semplice parlare di un conflitto che sull’ultimo scorcio degli
anni Ottanta si è abbattuto su una modesta porzione dell’Eurasia:
erano gli anni in cui la polveriera balcanica minacciava un’esplosione
imminente e l’intervento prioritario della comunita internazionale a
fronte dei molteplici crimini di guerra e di una sistematica pulizia
etnica ha lasciato cadere nell’oblio il conflitto armeno-azero.
Solamente nel 1992 l’Osce si preoccupava di comprendeva la reale
portata delle ostilita e – scostando quella discreta cortina di
silenzio – si proponeva di avviare i negoziati di pace, ricorrendo
all’arte mutevole della mediazione internazionale. Correva ancora
l’anno 1992, quando il Nagorno-Karabakh proclamava ufficialmente
la nascita della nuova Repubblica, sebbene il (proprio) Parlamento
ne avesse dichiarato l’indipendenza gia quattro anni prima. Così,
ricominciava il conflitto ancora una volta dimenticato.
In un ormai distante 1994, i rappresentanti dei due Paesi firmavano
in Kirghizistan un cessate il fuoco, che non è bastato a rendere
giustizia alle oltre trentamila vittime e a quasi un milione di
sfollati.
La moderata esposizione dell’impegno internazionale
Anche adesso che lo status quo appare la forma capovolta del progresso,
non si è registrata alcuna evoluzione: succede che le frequenti
schermaglie costringano l’esercito armeno a schierarsi a difesa dei
confini della regione e della fascia di sicurezza circostante e,
ad aggravare un prospetto di per sé poco confortante, continua
una guerra tra cecchini che ogni anno aumenta il numero dei caduti,
anche tra i civili.
A dispregio delle trattative di pace, i dati della spesa militare
sfoggiano una potenziale aggressivita abilmente mimetizzata da una
caotica diplomazia, e lasciano presagire che il conflitto non è
affatto congelato, bensì dinamico e carico di tensione. Mettere
un punto alle ostilita non sembra un obiettivo raggiungibile nel
medio termine: l’Armenia invoca logiche culturali e sociologiche
che motiverebbero come il Nagorno-Karabakh sia parte integrante
dell’identita nazionale; viceversa, l’Azerbaijan antepone ragioni di
orgoglio nazionale.
La storia del Caucaso ricorda che i conflitti dell’era post-sovietica
patiscono le conseguenze dei giochi di potere intrapresi dalle potenze
concorrenti e, se è vero che niente è lasciato al caso, è semplice
intuire perché, specialmente dal 2010, l’Azerbaijan si sia avvalso
dell’assistenza militare prestata dalla Turchia, mentre Mosca sia il
principale alleato dell’Armenia.
Anche l’Iran, nei giorni appena trascorsi, ha rinnovato il proprio
impegno verso una composizione del contenzioso del Nagorno-Karabakh,
palesando una sensibilita di vecchia data che lega la Repubblica
Islamica alle vicissitudini della limitrofa Armenia, un’isola etnica
nel cuore della regione turco-tatara.
(Per continuare la lettura cliccate su “2â~@³)
BAKU: ARMENIA PUSHES AZERBAIJAN TO BUILD MILITARY MUSCLE
Interfax, Russia
June 27 2013
The aggressive policy of the Armenian authorities has created a
confrontation, which jeopardizes the security of the entire region,
the Azeri Foreign Ministry said.
“Azerbaijan is strengthening its military potential in order to
keep its people safe. Armenia creates tensions in the region with
its aggression and occupies Azeri lands, which is why Azerbaijan
has to mount its defensive capabilities,” ministry spokesman Elman
Abdullayev told Interfax, responding to Armenian Defense Minister
Seyran Ohanian’s statement on militarization of Azerbaijan.
The opinion of Ohanian that “Armenia is the guarantor of physical
safety of Karabakh” is groundless, he said. “Armenia is not the
guarantor of physical safety of Karabakh: it has occupied the Karabakh
region of Azerbaijan. How can one occupy somebody else’s land, create
cruel ethnic cleansings and banish local residents while calling
oneself the guarantor of physical safety?” the diplomat wondered.
Azerbaijan simply has to strengthen one’s defensive capacities under
these circumstances, he said. “The Azeri Armed Forces have been
developed into one of the strongest and best trained high-tech armies
of the region,” the ministry spokesman said.
Te mk
EXPLANATIONS REQUESTED: RUSSIAN ARMS EXPORT TO AZERBAIJAN…
WPS Agency, Russia
June 27, 2013 Thursday
Source: Izvestia (Moscow issue), No 115, June 27, 2013, p. 7 by Tigran
Oganesjan, Konstantin Volkov
RUSSIAN ARMS EXPORT TO AZERBAIJAN PREDICTABLY DISTURBED AND UPSET
ARMENIA; Armenia is objecting to Russian arms export to Azerbaijan.
Russian arms export to Azerbaijan upset official Yerevan. Armenia
fears that it might tip regional parity in Azerbaijan’s favor.
Nagorno-Karabakh conflict makes Azerbaijan and Armenia particularly
sensitive to even smallest changes in the regional situation. No
wonder Yerevan is disturbed by the ongoing Russian-Azerbaijani
military-technical cooperation.
“The Azerbaijanis are getting weapons from Russia. We know it for
a fact,” said Armenian Defense Ministry Press Secretary Artsrun
Ovannisjan. “The military parade in Baku on June 26 is proof.”
According to some estimates, the military hardware package worth $1
billion includes tanks, mobile artillery guns, volley-fire rocket
launchers, and other weapons.
“We intend to ask the Russian authorities… to explain their
motives,” said Korjun Naapetjan of the Armenian parliament’s Defense
and Security Committee.
Apart from that, Armenia means to bring up the matter of Russian arms
export to Azerbaijan at the meeting of chairmen of parliamentary
committees on defense and security of the CIS Collective Security
Treaty Organization in Minsk, Belarus, and at the meeting of the
Defense and Security Committee of the CIS CSTO Parliamentary Assembly
in Yerevan come October.
“We want to know what convinced the Russians to sell military hardware
to Azerbaijan,” said Naapetjan. “Was it purely commercial interest…
or some other considerations perhaps?”
Ara Papjan, the head of Modus Vivendi center and ex-ambassador to
Canada, said that mere enquiries would be inadequate. Papjan suggested
a formal protest to the Russian Federation. “It’s wrong… for
Armenia’s strategic partner to be selling military hardware to
Azerbaijan,” he said.
Armenia cannot help thinking that Russian military hardware wielded by
the Azerbaijani regular army might tip regional parity in Baku’s favor.
The Armenians refer to the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in
Europe which sets weapons quotas for signatories. They claim that the
Azerbaijanis already have 600 tanks instead of the 220 permitted them
by the CFE.
“An intermediary in the Karabakh conflict… Russia is sending
100 brand-new tanks to Azerbaijan, a warring side that has already
exceeded its conventional arms quota,” said Alexander Arzumanjan,
lawmaker and former foreign minister.
Russian political scientists refuse to entertain the idea that
arms export to Azerbaijan will have any noticeable effect on the
Russian-Armenian relations.
“Russia and Armenia are members of the CIS CSTO… and Azerbaijan is
not,” said Institute of CIS Countries Directorate Konstantin Zatulin.
“What the Armenians are making all this noise about… comes down
to banal commerce. Russia might renege on the contract of course but
Azerbaijan will find military hardware it needs elsewhere and get it
all the same.”
Zatulin continued, “Besides, Armenia is getting its share of Russian
military hardware too. S-300 complexes for example are weapons more
formidable than whatever Russia sells to Baku.”
[Translated from Russian]
IRAN CLERIC SAYS REBEL KARABAKH BELONGS TO AZERBAIJAN, ISLAM
Iranian Students News Agency ISNA, Iran
June 27 2013
Tabriz, 27 June: [The Iranian] Supreme Leader’s representative in East
Azarbayjan Province has said that [Azerbaijan’s breakaway republic
of Nagornyy] Karabakh is a part of Azerbaijani and Muslim lands.
At a meeting with religious organizations of the Karabakh region
of Azerbaijan, Supreme Leader [Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamene’i]’s
representative in the East Azarbayjan Province, Ayatollah Mohsen
Mojtahed-Shabestari, said that Karabakh, like Palestine, belongs to
Islam and the occupation of it is doomed. He added: We treat Karabakh
the same as we treat the occupation of oppressed Palestinian territory.
He said: We recognize the occupation of these clearly Muslim lands as
a disgraceful act, because we believe that Karabakh clearly belongs
to Islam and is Azerbaijani land.
Ayatollah Mojtahed-Shabestari continued: We recognize the occupiers of
Karabakh as ruthless usurpers, and Iran follows the rule of protecting
the oppressed from the oppressors.
He said that the occupation of Karabakh and Susa [Shusha]
was unfortunate for the Muslim people of Iran, particularly for
Azerbaijanis [presumably Iranian Azarbayjanis]. He added: Iran has
always supported the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan and condemned
the Armenian occupation.
The representative of Valey-e Faqih [Iran’s Leader Seyyed Ali
Khamene’i] in the province said that Iran has always supported the
fighters of Karabakh and even though Iran has economic relations with
Armenia, this does not mean that it backs the occupation of Karabakh
by any means; these are just economic relations and Iran has always
objected to the issue of the occupation of Karabakh.
He added: Iran has economic relations with all countries except the
fake Zionist regime and the political and economic assistance which
the Islamic Republic of Iran provides to the Republic of Azerbaijan
is undeniable.
He said: We expect the officials of Azerbaijan to appreciate these
contributions.
The Friday prayer leader of Tabriz said that Iran is ready to resolve
the Karabakh conflict and added: Iran is fully ready to participate
in the mediation of the Karabakh conflict based on a just peace
[resolution].
He said that the return of the territory of Karabakh to Azerbaijan
is Iran’s official position and the Islamic Republic of is ready to
give further assistance to Muslims of Karabakh.
[Translated from Persian]