Azernews.Az

BAKU – The recent WikiLeaks reports quoting ambassadors who worked in Azerbaijan in past years are baseless, the Azerbaijani president’s top aide told local news agency APA.

The controversial reports quoting former US ambassadors Reno Harnish and Anne Derse, posted on the WikiLeaks website in the last few days, pertained to Azerbaijan and a number of Azerbaijani officials, including Presidential Administration chief Ramiz Mehdiyev.

"I am saying upfront that these are [someone’s] personal speculations and some had deliberately organized their publication today," Mehdiyev said. "It appears that someone needs circulation of such reports, including the shape-up of false views about Azerbaijan."

The WikiLeaks reports claimed that the Azerbaijani Presidential Administration head has close ties to Russia's oil giant Lukoil and wields influence in the Russian ruling elite and business circles. The reports said Mehdiyev allegedly runs several companies engaged in construction operations that have assumed a wide scale in Azerbaijan in recent years.

"After familiarizing myself with such a nonsensical, false and concocted story, I had serious doubts that such reports would bring benefits to a superpower like the United States," Mehdiyev commented. "If, indeed, a superpower pursued its policy toward all other countries on the basis of subjective assumptions… of its ambassadors, it would not be hard to imagine its future image among world nations."