Liz Fuller author of RFE/RL Caucasus Report published yet another article revealing her decades-old anti-Azerbaijani bias.
On June 22, 2010, Liz Fuller, the author of the Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty’s (RFE/RL) Caucasus Report published yet another article revealing her decades-old anti-Azerbaijani bias aired through the reputable media source. Initially titled “OSCE, EU Condemn ‘Unacceptable’ Azerbaijani Attack” the article squared the blame for the June 19th skirmish between Azerbaijani and Armenian forces on Nagorno-Karabakh frontline solely on Azerbaijan, by misquoting the original statement of the OSCE Minsk Group (MG) co-chairs.
“The French, Russian, and US co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group issued a toughly worded statement on June 21 condemning the reconnaissance mission by Azerbaijani forces late on June 18 across the Line of Contact separating Azerbaijani and Karabakh Armenian forces east of the unrecognized Nagorno-Karabakh republic”, Ms. Fuller writes.
The full text of the actual ‘toughly worded’ statement, which she likely never read, is available on the OSCE’s official websitehttp://www.osce.org/item/44737.html Nowhere does this original statement even imply that Azerbaijan was the perpetrator of the attack.
After a number of protest letters to the RFE/RL management, Ms. Fuller attempted to ‘fix’ her misquoting by changing the article title to “OSCE, EU Condemn Karabakh ‘Armed Incident’” and adding the following paragraph at the end:
*UPDATE: It has been brought to my attention that I appear inadvertently to have misrepresented the statement by the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs that condemned the violent incident, but did not blame Azerbaijan for starting it. The statement further called on the sides to “exercise restraint” and “prepare their population for peace.”
Liz Fuller, a 20-year-old RFE/RL veteran can not make ‘inadvertent’ mistakes regarding the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. From her writing, it appears that she did not even read the original OSCE statement before dubbing it ‘toughly worded’. In a rather soft statement of concern, the OSCE MG co-chairmen called both sides to refrain from the use of force while not naming any party responsible for the skirmish on June 19th. Moreover, Ms. Fuller’s cosmetic modification with the title replacement and addition of a useless postscriptum were not satisfactory, the first sentence of the “updated” article still falsely claimed that the OSCE statement was issued in regards to ‘the reconnaissance mission by Azerbaijani forces’.
Furthermore, in her report, Ms. Fuller called the front line between Armenian and Azerbaijani forces as the Line of Contact that separates ‘Azerbaijani and Karabakh Armenian forces’. This wording from a reporter of RFE/RL, a US-Congress-funded media entity, is clearly siding with the Armenian propaganda myth that the conflict is between Azerbaijan and so-called ‘Nagorno-Karabakh Republic’ without the involvement of Armenia. Such view stands against the US position as an OSCE MG mediator, articulated
by the famous 1992 “[James] Baker rules” which defined Armenia and Azerbaijan as primary parties to the conflict. It also challenges the official US position formulated by the State Department in refusing to recognize Nagorno-Karabakh as a state entity.
Along the same biased line of reporting, Ms. Fuller also alleged that among the incident casualties were the ‘four Karabakh Armenian conscripts’ as if she has personally verified their identity. But again, similar to her obvious unawareness of the OSCE statement, Ms. Fuller may not have also been aware that the Armenian authorities already disclosed the identities of the four killed servicemen. All of them originated not from Nagorno-Karabakh region of Azerbaijan but were drafted for service in Armenia by the military recruitment offices of that country. This fact alone exposes not only the false claim by Ms. Fuller, but also serves as a solid proof that Armenia is a primary party of the conflict and directly participates in the military occupation of the internationally recognized Azerbaijani territory.
Finally, Ms. Fuller, perhaps again ‘inadvertently’, used the Armenian spelling of the name of occupied Azerbaijani village where the incident took place – as ‘Chaylu’. Yet the original name of the place is Turkic – ‘Chayli’ – which means ‘by the river’.
It is not difficult to see that three instances of obviously Armenian interpretations and spellings in Liz Fuller’s article could be anything but pro-Armenian sympathies.
The second wave of protest letters from the outraged readers to RFE/RL management resulted in some more changes to the article text, although the misspelled name of the Azerbaijani village was not completely removed despite promises to do so. And even its current version hardly makes this RFE/RL report fully balanced, as it still gives disproportionately more space to Armenian commentators and quotes some unrecognized ‘NKR’ authorities speaking about the fate of military servicemen from Armenia.
In his recent letter to Azerbaijani President, Ilham Aliyev, President Barack Obama stated his willingness to resolve the existing issues in US-Azerbaijani relations. It is not a secret that many of those issues emanate from the US strategy in the South Caucasus region as a whole and on the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict specifically. Liz Fuller’s persistent bias in the US-funded media entity is not only unhelpful in resolving such difficulties, just the opposite, it is very much damaging as well to the fine work of RFE/RL and its Azeri service.
In Azerbaijan, which Liz Fuller very much dislikes, a reporter who only brings damage to country’s relations with another country is usually dismissed. On a broader scale, in the US, a general who via media blatantly challenges administration’s policy in fighting wars in another country, also gets dismissed (e.g.,seehttp://edition.cnn.com/2010/POLITICS/06/23/general.mcchrystal.obama.apology/index.html?hpt=T2). Unable to curb her pro-Armenian sympathies, for the past 15+ years, Liz Fuller has been damaging to RFE/RL as well as to the US policy in Azerbaijan under any administration. While not suggesting her dismissal, the authors hope that RFE/RL management will finally take the necessary steps
by the famous 1992 “[James] Baker rules” which defined Armenia and Azerbaijan as primary parties to the conflict. It also challenges the official US position formulated by the State Department in refusing to recognize Nagorno-Karabakh as a state entity.
Along the same biased line of reporting, Ms. Fuller also alleged that among the incident casualties were the ‘four Karabakh Armenian conscripts’ as if she has personally verified their identity. But again, similar to her obvious unawareness of the OSCE statement, Ms. Fuller may not have also been aware that the Armenian authorities already disclosed the identities of the four killed servicemen. All of them originated not from Nagorno-Karabakh region of Azerbaijan but were drafted for service in Armenia by the military recruitment offices of that country. This fact alone exposes not only the false claim by Ms. Fuller, but also serves as a solid proof that Armenia is a primary party of the conflict and directly participates in the military occupation of the internationally recognized Azerbaijani territory.
Finally, Ms. Fuller, perhaps again ‘inadvertently’, used the Armenian spelling of the name of occupied Azerbaijani village where the incident took place – as ‘Chaylu’. Yet the original name of the place is Turkic – ‘Chayli’ – which means ‘by the river’.
It is not difficult to see that three instances of obviously Armenian interpretations and spellings in Liz Fuller’s article could be anything but pro-Armenian sympathies.
The second wave of protest letters from the outraged readers to RFE/RL management resulted in some more changes to the article text, although the misspelled name of the Azerbaijani village was not completely removed despite promises to do so. And even its current version hardly makes this RFE/RL report fully balanced, as it still gives disproportionately more space to Armenian commentators and quotes some unrecognized ‘NKR’ authorities speaking about the fate of military servicemen from Armenia.
In his recent letter to Azerbaijani President, Ilham Aliyev, President Barack Obama stated his willingness to resolve the existing issues in US-Azerbaijani relations. It is not a secret that many of those issues emanate from the US strategy in the South Caucasus region as a whole and on the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict specifically. Liz Fuller’s persistent bias in the US-funded media entity is not only unhelpful in resolving such difficulties, just the opposite, it is very much damaging as well to the fine work of RFE/RL and its Azeri service.
In Azerbaijan, which Liz Fuller very much dislikes, a reporter who only brings damage to country’s relations with another country is usually dismissed. On a broader scale, in the US, a general who via media blatantly challenges administration’s policy in fighting wars in another country, also gets dismissed (e.g.,seehttp://edition.cnn.com/2010/POLITICS/06/23/general.mcchrystal.obama.apology/index.html?hpt=T2). Unable to curb her pro-Armenian sympathies, for the past 15+ years, Liz Fuller has been damaging to RFE/RL as well as to the US policy in Azerbaijan under any administration. While not suggesting her dismissal, the authors hope that RFE/RL management will finally take the necessary steps to avoid such unconstructive and biased positions being aired through its website.
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