GOOD WILL OF STEPANAKERT IS NOT APPRECIATED IN BAKU

PanARMENIAN.Net - The Karabakh authorities decided to release the war prisoner and give him to Azerbaijan despite the fact that neither the official Baku nor the relatives of the prisoner applied to them with such a request. Nevertheless, the NKR government announced from the very beginning that Elmeddin Abiyev would be returned as soon as his health would allow. On January 10 the prisoner underwent a hard surgery, which in fact saved his life. The representatives of the International Committee of Red Cross and the OSCE, having visited him regularly in the hospital confirmed that he was being provided with a high quality medical aid and had got everything necessary for his rehabilitation. Abiyev himself assured he was satisfied with the attention of the doctors to whom he was very thankful.

Despite this fact, in Baku they made a noise around the fact of imprisonment of the saboteur. In letters addressed to several international institutions the imprisonment o Abiyev is being described as a “violation of international legal norms and human rights”. We’ll note that the Azerbaijani authorities, who were pretending to be concerned with the health situation of Abiyev, did not allow his parents to visit him. While the NKR authorities, being led by humanity, gave them such a possibility – the official Stepanakert guaranteed the security of his relatives.

Such a demonstration of good will was not appreciated in Azerbaijan. The Baku authorities refused to discuss with the NKR State Committee the issues of war prisoners and hostages. And this was after the conversation of Robert Kocharian and Heydar Aliyev during the Kiev summit of the leaders of CIS countries. During this conversation the President of Armenia transmitted to President of Azerbaijan the assurance of Arkady Ghukasian to decide the issue of the war prisoner as soon as he becomes transportable.

But Baku was again dissatisfied. Instead of expressing a gratitude for the humanity shown to the war prisoner being cured by the best doctors of the Republic, the Azerbaijanis started a campaign by sending letters to the UNO, OSCE and the Council of Europe demanding to make a pressure on Armenia (why Armenia and not Karabakh?). It’s noteworthy that even after Arkady Ghukasian officially announced about the intention to release the prisoner, they were continuing to send the letters.

There is an impression that from the very beginning in Baku they were not interested in the fate of the war prisoner which was most likely sent to the territory controlled by Karabakh with an intention to provoke the Armenians and use it in the anti-Armenian propaganda campaign. For example, a well-known public figure Arif Yunusov (his mother is Armenian) in an interview with one of the Baku newspapers urged the country’s government to hurry up and send letters to the OSCE Minsk group and the CoE before Abiyev is released. Yunusov said that “Azerbaijan has to get use of this incident in propaganda purposes”. It is interesting, whether Elmeddin Abiyev knows that in his motherland he is being considered as a mean for conducting propaganda?