September 19, 2002 - 19:16 AMT
AZERI FOREIGN MINISTER'S ACCUSATIONS CONCERNING ARMENIA AT UN GENERAL ASSEMBLY HAS ADVERSELY AFFECTED BAKU'S IMAGE
Azeri foreign minister Vilayat Guliyev's accusations concerning Armenia at the UN General Assembly were taken quite negatively by the session participants. As the Armenian foreign minister noted in his interview with "Prometey" TV channel, Guliyev's speech was beside the point at the meeting when the attention of all the countries was focused on the Iraqi issue. "Those statements adversely affected Azerbaijan first of all as it has become obvious for all the session participants that Azerbaijan takes all the opportunities to settle its political issues", he stated. "As Azerbaijan decided to make use of the situation this time too, it accused Armenia of that it, the same way as Iraq, does not satisfy the UN resolutions", the minister stated. Evidently the Azeri party, according to the minister, forgot about the fact the Armenia has no obligations to the UNO. The Armenian foreign minister reminded that Azerbaijan had resorted to the same insinuations after the September 11 terrorist acts in the US and tried to present the Nagorno-Karabakh issue in the context of terrorism. According to Oskanian, such a step for the second time just annoyed the session participants.