Azernews.Az

BAKU - Five Azerbaijani journalists have attended an international conference in Armenia.
During their five-day visit, they were among the journalists who attended the conference, "Freedom of Information in the Caucasus". The event, organized by the US George Washington University’s National Security Archive close to the Armenian capital Yerevan, was also joined by their counterparts from Georgia, Russia and the United States.
Azerbaijan and Armenia have been locked in conflict for two decades.
Asaf Guliyev, an employee of Azerbaijan’s state television channel AzTV, who heads an organization assisting independent journalists, told AssA-Irada that the conference aimed to achieve creating a broad regional network comprising media representatives to protect freedom of information. Therefore, media outlets from other countries are being drawn to the annual event.
A similar event was held in Georgia in 2009 and is due in Azerbaijan next year.
According to Guliyev, four secret service officers guarded them during their visit to Armenia. Given that their security was properly ensured, the Azerbaijani journalists faced no problems.
The journalists held no official or informal meetings on the sidelines of the conference and only communicated with rank-and-file Armenians in the city. The reactions of their interlocutors were different, Guliyev said.
"Some of them were surprised, some looked at us with curiosity and some with hate."
Guliyev said that though the Armenian public presented themselves as peaceloving people, they did not appear to be willing to make concessions in the Upper (Nagorno) Garabagh conflict settlement.
"They want peace, but since they see themselves as the victor, they want peace that suits them. When we said ‘Azerbaijani lands have been occupied, they have to be returned’, they replied that ‘this has to be discussed, it has to be reviewed.’"
Guliyev said that though prior to the Azerbaijani journalists’ visit they were promised that their visit to Nagorno Garabagh would be arranged, at the last moment the Armenian side failed to do so, citing discontent from Garabagh Armenians.
20 percent of Azerbaijan’s territory, including Nagorno Garabagh and seven adjacent districts, has been under Armenian occupation since the two South Caucasus republics signed a precarious cease-fire in 1994 following a lengthy war. Over a decade of efforts by US, Russian and French mediators have been unsuccessful so far.*