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There is no entry ban in Azerbaijan based on ethnicity, President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev said on February 23 at a meeting with heads of leading Russian media outlets at the TASS news agency, SİA informs.
Answering a question of the editor-in-chief of RT TV channel, Margarita Simonyan, who alleged that citizens with an Armenian surname are not allowed to enter Azerbaijan, President Ilham Aliyev pointed out that this information was wide off the mark.
"I must say that the information you shared is wide off the mark. We do not have an entry ban based on ethnicity. Numerous visits by representatives of Armenian people are evidence of this. They participated in sporting events such as Euro Games. The team from Armenia participated, and I even remember that I personally presented a silver medal to a representative of Ukraine, an Armenian by nationality. He stood on the podium, next to an Azerbaijani boxer, who won gold, and I awarded both him [the boxer], including him [the Armenian], and shook his hand and congratulated him. The audience, which, perhaps, was not fully tuned in to this, applauded me for a long time," the president said.
"There is a certain bias in what you said. The same is true when representatives of Armenia come, not only ethnic Armenians, but representatives of Armenia come to Azerbaijan for various events. There was a visit of Catholicos Garegin several years ago. I met him in my office. He visited the Armenian church in Baku and was surprised that in this church we keep over 5,000 books in Armenian, he himself is a witness to this. I can give many such examples: parliamentarians, public figures, and citizens of other countries with Armenian roots," the president added.
President Ilham Aliyev drew attention to the fact that a certain number of Armenians still live in Azerbaijan and "nobody makes any claims against them".
The president of the republic invited Simonyan to Azerbaijan with a camera crew and personally verify the absence of these prohibitions.
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