COMEDY WITH ELEMENTS OF DETECTIVE STORY

Baku accuses the NKR President of high treason and illegal keeping of weapons.

It seems that Heydar Aliyev has decided to become a playwright. On the basis of the play authored by him, a comedy starring with officials of the Azerbaijani Prosecutor’s office is being staged. Ramiz Rzayev, First Deputy Prosecutor General informed recently about brining a criminal action against the citizen of the neighboring country – President of the NKR Arkady Ghukasian. According to the official, all the necessary documents are ready. As soon as the formal procedures are completed, Ghukasian will be wanted by the police.

November 27, 2002

PanARMENIAN.Net - The Baku authorities are likely to believe that such a trick may help them. This time they have exaggerated a little bit. The undertaken initiative may arouse only laughter. May anyone take seriously such a statement that “Ghukasian may be called to account for high treason and for illegal keeping of weapons”? This is a quotation from the statement of the leader of the “Karabakh” parliamentary faction Igbal Agazade. Being led by such logic, the fascist Germany should have accused Iosif Stalin of a “betrayal to the Reikh”, and sentence Winston Churchill to 5 years of imprisonment for possessing a “Browning” pistol.

In Baku also they understand the absurdness of the situation. For example, Lawyer Aslan Ismailov believes that if by saying high treason, they mean the movement started in the beginning of 1988, the criminal case should have been started 14 years ago. And if the matter concerns the hard consequences of the war, the issue should have been raised in 1993. Let us note that the Azerbaijani authorities, accusing the Karabakh authorities of criminal offences, in 1994 were not ashamed of asking the official Stepanakert to conclude a cease fire and signing the Bishkek agreement with the representatives of the NKR government.

The most strange thing is that they accuse the nowadays leader of Stepanakert. While in 1988 and in 1993 Ghukasian was not the President of Nagorno Karabakh. With the predecessor of Ghukasian, who, by the way, is ready to answer for each his step on the post of Karabakh President, Heydar Aliyev regularly shakes hands in front of the cameras of the Azerbaijani TV companies. Robert Kocharian has also been declared a betrayer and a criminal case has been brought against him as well. In 1988 they were even menacing that if Kocharian was going to participate in the TRASECA summit held in Baku, he would be arrested. However, in August 2002 Aliyev himself invited the first President of NKR to negotiations in the Sadarak village of Nakhichevan. The appropriate services of Azerbaijan, preparing the meeting, which could take advantage of the arrest warrant issued 4 years ago, were trying to seem as hospitable as possible. And they succeeded...

Sooner or later Aliyev or his successor will extend their hand also to Ghukasian. And that will be a good occasion to remember about the comedy being played today.