By empty (10/5/2004 issue of the CACI Analyst)
Azerbaijan has sent a letter to the Council of Europe demanding that Armenia be expelled from this organization. \"The document that contains the demand to exclude Armenia from the Council of Europe has already received the status of an official PACE document. It will be distributed among PACE countries\' representatives on Tuesday and will be discussed at a session of the Council of Europe ministers\' cabinet in the near future,\" a representatives of Azerbaijan\'s delegation at the Strasbourg PACE session, Rafael Guseinov, told Interfax.
Azerbaijan has sent a letter to the Council of Europe demanding that Armenia be expelled from this organization. \"The document that contains the demand to exclude Armenia from the Council of Europe has already received the status of an official PACE document. It will be distributed among PACE countries\' representatives on Tuesday and will be discussed at a session of the Council of Europe ministers\' cabinet in the near future,\" a representatives of Azerbaijan\'s delegation at the Strasbourg PACE session, Rafael Guseinov, told Interfax. \"This demand is motivated by the fact that Armenia has repeatedly violated the basic principles of the Council of Europe. Namely, Armenia continues the occupation of 20% of Azerbaijan\'s territory, Azerbaijan being another Council of Europe country,\" Guseinov said. Baku lost control over Nagorno-Karabakh in the course of a bloody conflict with Armenia in the 1990s. The UN Security Council has repeatedly condemned the occupation of Azerbaijani territory and demanded that Armenian military units be withdrawn from it. The OSCE Minsk Group, which includes representatives of Russia, France, and the United States, is mediating the conflict. (Interfax)