May 24, 2007 - 15:30 AMT
Azerbaijan's foreign policy is oriented towards West, society - to Islam
"Azerbaijan's foreign policy is oriented towards the West, while the society prefers the Islamic way of development," Director of Peace and War Institute of Baku Arif Yunusov stated at the conference in Yerevan organized by the Caucasian Media Institute. He said beginning from 2004 Islam is not used in negative context in the Azeri press. "I must notice that West for Azerbaijan is not only the U.S., but also Turkey, Israel and other states. We prefer to move towards the Turkish direction. There also exists a danger of involving Azerbaijan in the war against Iran, if such a thing happens. It's true that Azerbaijan will not be in the foreground, it may be used by the United States as a subsidiary bridgehead. In this case a humanitarian catastrophe awaits us. Some 40-50 thousands of refugees from Iran have already flooded Baku who buy apartments. And what will happen in case of military invasion? It is even terrible to think about it. The border between the two countries is rather transparent and about one million refugees may arrive in Azerbaijan and our country just will not be able to accept them," Yunusov said.