Iran: Ethnic Azeri Activist Predicts More Protests (NOTE WMD language!)

[Gloria]

From the new World Media Watch up now at http://www.zianet.com/insightanalytical
Tomorrow at Buzzflash.com


3//Eurasianet.org, US 7/31/06

http://www.eurasianet.org/departments/civilsociety/articles/eav073106.shtml



IRAN: ETHNIC AZERI ACTIVIST PREDICTS MORE PROTESTS
Shahin Abbasov and Khadija Ismailova

(Khadija Ismayilova is an analyst based in Washington. Shain Abbasov is a freelance journalist based in Baku.)



As the crisis over Iran’s nuclear research program intensifies, US officials appear to be paying greater attention to the demands and concerns of the country’s ethnic Azeris, its largest minority group.


(SNIP)



While the United States has long pressed for UN Security Council action to thwart Iran’s suspected atomic ambitions, in recent months American policymakers have looked for other means to slow, if not halt Iran’s nuclear research. Accordingly, mounting interethnic tension in Iran has intrigued some in Washington.



Unrest among Iranian Azeris began in late May, when protests over an official newspaper’s caricature of Azerbaijan as a cockroach led to the deaths of 24 people and the arrests of hundreds of activists demanding an expansion of Azeri cultural rights.



(SNIP)



Reflecting the increased US interest in interethnic issues inside Iran, US Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns and Deputy National Security Advisor Elliott Abrams met July 21 with US-based representatives of Iranian minority ethnic groups. The ways in which Iran’s different ethnic groups view Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad ‘s nuclear policies was of particular interest to both officials, stated Rahim Shahbazi, the deputy chairman of the World Azerbaijanis Congress (WAC), and one of the participants in the meeting.



Amid an overview of conditions for ethnic Azeris in Iran, Shahbazi said that he had expressed the concern to Burns and Abrams that weapons of mass destruction, once acquired, could be used against groups perceived as opposed to the Ahmadinejad administration. "Dictators tend to use their weapons of mass destruction against the internal opposition first," he stated. "That is what happened in Iraq, when Saddam used chemical weapons against the Shi’ah opposition."



US officials have not yet provided an account of what was discussed during the meeting.

MORE

[Igel]

1. Actually I think that if

the Iranian Azeris were united with their extra-Iranian brethren, it would solve the Nagorno-Karabakh problem quite neatly.

Azerbaidjan would be a happy, little contiguous state. The Iranian Azeris would at least not be subject to Persian discrimination. And the Azeri/Armenian simmering conflict would be over.

Not that anybody wants a sudden outbreak of peace, even on a miniscule scale.