Azeri president sets pre-conditions for re-opening of OSCE Baku office

The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) wants to re-open its office in Baku, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev said.


It was reported earlier that the OSCE closed the office of its project coordinator in Baku in July 2015.


"Now they want to re-open the office. I set a condition: bring [Alexis] Shakhtakhtinsky back, restore justice and his career, then we will re-open the office," Aliyev said at a meeting with a delegation from the European Union-Azerbaijan Parliamentary Cooperation Committee, expressing his attitude to the closure of the OSCE office in Baku, according to the website of the head of state.


The office was closed over the OSCE's unfair treatment of the office chief, Alexis Shakhtakhtinsky, the president said.


"The OSCE representative at the local office was a French citizen of Azeri origin, the only Azerbaijani employed by the French Foreign Ministry. He is from a very well-known Azeri family whose representatives were among the founders, in 1918, of the first democratic republic in the Muslim East, the Democratic Republic of Azerbaijan," Aliyev said.


The Shakhtakhtinsky family is treated with great respect in Azerbaijan, he said.


"This man worked in Azerbaijan for just one year, following which, as a result of interference by the U.S. ambassador to the OSCE, Baer, he was removed from office at a Permanent Committee meeting for having kept our joint photograph in his office room," the president said.


Shakhtakhtinsky was sacked as the head of the OSCE's Baku office as a result of pressure exerted on the French government, Aliyev said.


"His career is over. He was sacked from the French Foreign Ministry. Simply for [having] a photo with me. If the U.S. representative to the OSCE thinks being photographed with me is a crime, then what are we talking about? What did I say? I said that if Shakhtakhtinsky gets dismissed, the office would be closed. I warned them, they did not listen, and so we did this [close the office]," Aliyev said.

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