Informal meetings of representatives
of the Armenian and Azerbaijani civic societies are quite rare. They meet only
outside the region, which makes such meetings expensive and not easy to
organize. In addition, Armenian analysts and civic society representatives
cannot travel to Azerbaijan, Director of the Caucasus Institute Alexander
Iskandaryan told ArmInfo.
"Meanwhile. foreign citizens visiting Nagorny
Karabakh find themselves in the 'black lists of personas non-grata' in
Azerbaijan. I think, it is necessary to
do everything quite on the contrary in order to avoid paranoidism
characteristic to close societies. Karabakh
should be opened not closed. It is necessary to try to talk to the Karabakh
people. After all, Baku considers Karabakh as part of Azerbaijan, but the
citizens of Azerbaijan cannot travel to Karabakh," he said. In this light,
the political scientist believes that Baku's policy is a failed PR.
Earlier on 23 September, Azerbaijan's Foreign Ministry
has removed four foreigners from the list of the people, who have visited the
Nagorno Karabakh Republic. A member of
Russia's State Duma Alexei Mitrofanov, head of the Moscow office 'Voice of
America' James Brook , Johns Hopkins University students Ivan Benovich and
Nicholas Vondra are those 'happy' people that have been removed from the list
of "persona non grata" after expressing their sincere regret for
visiting Nagorno Karabakh.
They appealed to the
government of Azerbaijan and expressed their remorse, after which their names
were removed from the list of "persona non grata". Azerbaijan has
already blacklisted 300 prominent and well-known people who 'dared' to visit
Nagorno Karabakh 'without permission of Baku.'