Azerbaijan

Thomas Goltz ("How the Other Half Lives in Oil-Rich Azerbaijan," Opinion, Nov. 23) states that "a World Bank project is shoveling tens of millions of dollars to reconstruct homes in the one area 'liberated' from Armenian occupation by the Azeri forces in spring 1994." This statement is incorrect. The World Bank is not currently funding, nor has it funded, the construction of any houses in Fizuli region or elsewhere in Azerbaijan. The World Bank is assisting the government of Azerbaijan and other governments of the South Caucasus to develop reconstruction programs to help restore economic and social infrastructure to a region ravaged by wars and civil strife.

MEXICO CITY - Adios, Heydar Aliyev, late strongman of distant Azerbaijan. Now that your statue has been hauled away from the Paseo de La Reforma, the Mexican capital's grand boulevard, where will Mexicans go now when they want to meditate on your legacy of KGB membership, fraudulent elections and human rights violations? Early Saturday, in the darkness sometime after midnight, Mexico City officials wrapped up the bronze statue of Aliyev, the ruler of Azerbaijan from 1993 to 2003, and ferried it away on a truck.

MEXICO CITY - The leafy green parks of Mexico City's elegant Polanco neighborhood have their politically comforting statues. There's Abraham Lincoln, poised thoughtfully near a shallow pond. Across from him, there's Martin Luther King. And a few blocks away, Mohandas Gandhi. And then there's the newest addition, a real head-scratcher: Heydar Aliyev, the late strongman of Azerbaijan. The presence of Aliyev, in larger-than-life bronze on a well-traveled segment of the city's iconic Reforma Boulevard, has infuriated residents.

MEXICO CITY -- That big, hulking statue of the Caucasian strongman has got to go. Such was the recommendation Friday of a special committee appointed to resolve one of the odder controversies to beset this capital. At issue: the city government's decision to allow Azerbaijan to erect a monument to its late president, Heydar Aliyev, on the iconic Reforma Boulevard, prime real estate in the sprawling megalopolis. The bronze and marble statue generated protests and a running debate in the media.

Azerbaijanis voted Saturday in a referendum on constitutional reforms that the government says are needed to improve ties with the West but that the opposition warns will be a blow to democracy in the former Soviet republic. A preliminary count indicated that more than 88% of Azerbaijan's 4.4 million voters cast ballots, according to election officials. No results were released. Opposition groups boycotted the vote, saying the proposed changes appear designed to enable President Heydar A.

A third of the election observers who represented the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe during a presidential poll in Azerbaijan this month have accused the body of ignoring widespread vote-rigging. Some of the observers donned dark glasses and held white canes in front of the OSCE office in Warsaw. The OSCE says the Oct. 15 election of Ilham Aliyev as president was "generally well administered in most polling stations but ... still fell short of international standards."

Avian flu has spread to a new country, with Azerbaijan saying Friday that the lethal H5N1 strain had been found in wild birds floating dead on the Caspian Sea. The birds were found near the Apsheron Peninsula, which includes the capital Baku, and off the southern Massali region, near the border with Iran. China and Indonesia also reported Friday two more human deaths from bird flu, which was discovered this week in Nigeria for the first time.

A gunman killed Azerbaijan's air force chief, Lt. Gen. Rail Rzayev, outside his home in the capital, Baku, the Defense Ministry said. President Ilham Aliyev in televised comments said he would take personal control of the investigation. Officials said they did not know the motive.

The way Farhad Aliyev's wife sees it, accusations of corruption and plotting a coup against her husband would collapse if only they could get the attention of his former boss, Azerbaijan's president. The way others see it, the president is the problem. Aliyev, the former minister of economic development in this oil-rich country bordering the Caspian Sea, was arrested nearly two years ago and is now on trial on corruption charges.

The failure of an Azerbaijani airliner's control system probably caused it to crash, killing all 23 people on board, an airline official said Saturday. But Ilham Amirov, the deputy chief of Azerbaijani Airlines, said it was too early to dismiss other possible causes, including a terrorist attack, of the crash Friday night of the An-140 twin-engine turboprop.

MEXICO CITY - The leafy green parks of Mexico City's elegant Polanco neighborhood have their politically comforting statues. There's Abraham Lincoln, poised thoughtfully near a shallow pond. Across from him, there's Martin Luther King. And a few blocks away, Mohandas Gandhi. And then there's the newest addition, a real head-scratcher: Heydar Aliyev, the late strongman of Azerbaijan. The presence of Aliyev, in larger-than-life bronze on a well-traveled segment of the city's iconic Reforma Boulevard, has infuriated residents.

- The U.S. won its second wrestling medal of the Olympics when Coleman Scott came back to win a bronze in the 132-pound class on Saturday. Scott was beaten by eventual gold medalist Toghrul Asgarov of Azerbaijan in the semifinals but worked his way back through the repechage round. Scott beat Kenichi Yumoto of Japan in one of the two bronze matches. Besik Kudukhov of Russia won the silver and Yogeshwar Dutt of India got the other bronze. The U.S. had another chance at a medal but Tervel Dlagnev lost in a bronze-medal match to Komeil Ghasemi of Iran in the 264-pound class.

It happened in Baku, transforming the capital of Azerbaijan into a battleground in a global shadow war. Police intercepted a fleeing car and captured two suspected Hezbollah militants from Lebanon. The car contained explosives, binoculars, cameras, pistols with silencers and reconnaissance photos. Raiding alleged safe houses, police foiled what authorities say was a plot to blow up the Israeli Embassy in Azerbaijan, a former Soviet republic that borders Iran.

A young man opened fire Thursday in a bustling building in a prestigious university in Azerbaijan, killing 12 people before turning the gun on himself. The gunman was identified as Farda Gadyrov, a citizen of neighboring Georgia. He entered the building at Azerbaijan State Oil Academy in Baku, the capital, about 9:30 a.m. and began climbing the stairs, shooting indiscriminately as he went, officials said. More than a dozen people were wounded. The gunman killed himself as police closed in.

Alekper Aliyev's cellphone buzzed on the iron table. "What's going on is a nightmare," said the text message from one of his readers. "I worry about you. Take care. Don't give up." The 31-year-old Azerbaijani novelist says he knew his latest book would cause a storm, but he never imagined the police would get involved. "Artush and Zaur," the story of a gay love affair between an Azeri and an Armenian amid war between their countrymen as the Soviet Union is collapsing, is cultural dynamite for mainly Muslim Azerbaijan.

A gunman killed Azerbaijan's air force chief, Lt. Gen. Rail Rzayev, outside his home in the capital, Baku, the Defense Ministry said. President Ilham Aliyev in televised comments said he would take personal control of the investigation. Officials said they did not know the motive.

If there is a post-Cold War Berlin, it may well be this agricultural town straddling a river between Iran and Azerbaijan, a former Soviet republic that has become an important ally in Washington's declared war on Islamic extremism.

The president of oil-rich Azerbaijan won reelection by a landslide in a vote boycotted by opposition parties, and European monitors said the ballot failed to meet international standards. With 70% of precincts counted, President Ilham Aliyev won 89% of Wednesday's vote, Central Election Commission chief Mazahir Panahov said. Aliyev, who has led the Caspian nation of 8 million people since 2003, faced six opponents. But the country's top five opposition parties boycotted the vote, saying they were not allowed to campaign freely and pointing to the government's history of closing independent media and imprisoning opposition figures.

There's probably no country in the world watching the Russia-Georgia conflict more intently than this small, energy-rich nation to the south and east of the turmoil. It too leans toward the West. Its oil runs through the pipeline that crosses Georgia. And it too wants to know how far Russia will go to keep its former vassal states within its sphere of influence. Azerbaijan was one of the first Soviet republics to win independence. It's a rare secular Muslim nation with a tradition of religious tolerance -- it enjoys friendly relations with Israel.