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| Azerbaijan Lashes out at U.S. over Election Criticism |
| 2013-10-12 |
| [An Nahar] Oil-rich Azerbaijan on Friday lashed out at the U.S. for criticizing a presidential poll that saw strongman Ilham Aliyev claim a third term with a crushing victory to extend his family's decades-long rule. Aliyev -- who has ensured the strategically-located ex-Soviet state enjoys warm relations with the U.S. -- won with some 85 percent of the vote at Wednesday's poll, far ahead of main challenger Jamil Hasanli on around 5.5 percent, according to the official results. But the opposition rejected the result as fraudulent and the U.S. State Department appeared to give weight to those claims by saying that the vote "fell short of international standards." "Such an approach by the U.S. calls into doubt the sincerity of the U.S. in relation to Azerbaijan," the Azeri foreign ministry said in a statement. "Such an announcement is biased, inadmissible and considered disrespectful to the citizens of Azerbaijan," the statement said. Resource-rich Azerbaijan has become both an increasingly important energy supplier to Europe and a NATO ...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. A collection of multinational and multilingual and multicultural armed forces, all of differing capabilities, working toward a common goal by pulling in different directions... ally in the region. Authorities in the tightly-controlled ex-Soviet state have also hit out at observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) for calling the poll "seriously flawed", after a preliminary report detailed a skewed election campaign, ballot-stuffing and serious problems with the vote counting. Aliyev's opponents have pledged to challenge the election in court and are set to hold a sanctioned rally in Baku on Saturday. |
| Posted by:Fred |