Azerbaijan's President Heydar Aliyev has postponed a visit to Iran, the presidential press service said early Sunday, prompting speculation that the move was linked to last week's terror attacks in the United States.
No reason was given for the postponement, but Aliyev, as reported by the Interfax news agency, said he backed US President George W. Bush's call for counter-strikes against terrorists while warning against taking decisions in haste.
Counter-measures should only be taken "after the organisers have been tracked down," Interfax quoted Aliyev as telling a delegation of the Parlimentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) that visited Baku Saturday.
However he stressed that hasty decisions "sometimes result in mistakes."
And he warned that no measures should be taken against a nation or religion as a whole on the basis of the nationality or religion of the terrorists found to be responsible for Tuesday's attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon.
Aliyev had been due to fly to the Iranian capital Tehran on Monday for talks to resolve a row between the two countries over how to divide up oil rights in the Caspian Sea.
"The visit ... scheduled for 17 to 19 September, has been temporarily postponed," the president's press service said without elaborating.
The press service said a new date would be set through diplomatic channels.
The official announcement follows press reports earlier this week that Aliyev was under pressure from US diplomats to boycott Iran in the wake of the attacks on New York and Washington.
Aliyev told PACE Secretary-General Lord Russell-Johnston that Azerbaijan would take "all necessary measures" in relation to the terror attacks, citing increased identity checks, Interfax reported.
There have been no firm allegations of Iranian involvement in the attacks, but Western governments have fingered Iran's hardline Islamic regime as having harboured terrorists in the past.
"So soon after the tragic events in New York and Washington, the Azeri president cannot visit a country which is accused by the US of supporting international terrorism," the Zerkalo newspaper wrote on Friday.
Aliyev and the PACE envoy also discussed the situation regarding the search for a settlement over Nagorno Karabakh, the mainly Armenian enclave in Azeri territory over which the neighbouring republics are in a state of undeclared war, Interfax reported.
Russell-Johnston regretted that a peace settlement had not been achieved since Azerbaijan and Armenia had joined the Council of Europe, and stressed that this depended entirely on the two parties to the conflict.
They alone can attain a settlement by making mutual compromises, Interfax quoted the envoy as saying -- BAKU (AFP)
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