Azerbaijan, Baku, December 4 / Trend , U.Sadikhova /
Euronews TV channel wants to make a program about Azerbaijani refugees who left the region as a result of the Armenian-Azerbaijani Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, Editor-in-Chief of Euronews Peter Barabas told Trend by telephone on Dec. 4.
"Now it looks we has began discussions on various channels because we badly want, we are very keen to go and to do the story on the other side, with the people of Azerbaijan, the people who live on the conflict zone, and would like to do the story on the Azerbaijani refuges, who left the region because of the conflict," he said.
According to him, the TV has applied officially to Azerbaijan, as well as sent a letter to Azerbaijan's embassy in Brussels but has never received the answer,
On Nov. 28, Euronews has broadcasted a reportage by Michael Raikhman "Nagorno-Karabakh - wind of change", which is very biased and one-sidedly interpreted events in the Karabakh war. The press service of Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry and ruling New Azerbaijan Party sent letters to the management of the TV channel with regards to the reportage. "In the telecast "Nagorno-Karabakh - wind of change" on Nov. 28 on the Euronews TV channel, once again an attempt was made to, through bias approach, confuse the world and European public opinion through presenting reasons and essence of the conflict in accordance with the position of the Armenian side," the letter of protest said," the party's letter of protest said.
In this program Nagorno-Karabakh was presented as an "independent country" and the head of the fictitious structure Bako Saakian as "president of this country". "In addition, Nagorno-Karabakh which was recognized by all international documents and authoritative international organizations as the territory of Azerbaijan and which has no geographical link with Armenia, was described as the "heart" of Armenia.
According to Barabas, the TV channel still hopes that the Azerbaijani government will allow them an access to do the same story "as we did on the Armenian side because we want to be very transparent on this. We stand up to our story, the way we did this because we wanted to reflect the way people live there, and that is exactly what we intend to do on the Azerbaijani side as well."
"We got the access from the Armenian government to be able to go to Nagorno-Karabakh and when we decided to go in, our intentions were and that is what our story reflects is to see how the people of Nagorno-Karabakh, the people who are involved in this conflict, the people of the region to see exactly actually how they live," Barabas said.
"We never intended to get involved in the political aspect of the matter [Nagorno-Karabakh], because how sensitive that is between Azerbaijan and Armenia. We just wanted to show in the story how the people of Nagorno-Karabakh live on that side, and that what our story reflects and we stand by our story," he said.
According to him, the TV channel has not received yet the protest letter from the Azerbaijani side "Unfortunately, we have been waiting for it, but it hasn't come to us yet. I can not comment on the letter which has not yet been received, we are waiting to see the letter and then we will answer on it accordingly. We have not seen this letter in Euronews, though we know that it is coming. I can not tell you what we are going to say until we do not see the letter," Barabas said.
The conflict between the two South Caucasus countries began in 1988 when Armenia made territorial claims against Azerbaijan. Armenian armed forces have occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan since 1992, including the Nagorno-Karabakh region and 7 surrounding districts. Azerbaijan and Armenia signed a ceasefire agreement in 1994. The co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group - Russia, France, and the U.S. - are currently holding the peace negotiations.