NEW CRISIS OVER AZERBAIJAN

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22201, 11 December 1946, Page 4

NEW CRISIS OVER AZERBAIJAN

RE PORTS of fighting across the border of Azerbaijan indicate that relations between Teheran and Tabriz have entered a new state of crisis. This time the trouble seems to be bound up with the holding of the Persian general election. In June an agreement was signed between the Government at Teheran and the so-called autonomous administration in Azerbaijan which gave the province a generous measure of political and financial self-government and provided for elections to the Persian Parliament before the end of the year. Those elections were to have been held last week-end, but from the more recent news to hand it would appear that the issue has been overshadowed, if not altogether supplanted, by armed conflict. To arrive at the truth of the position is a matter of extreme difficulty. One conjecture as likely to be as accurate as any other is that the politicians ill Tabriz have read into the agreement with Teheran rather more than the actual contents. It is no doubt being assumed that the agreement gives Azerbaijan the right to organise the election of its representatives without supervision by Teheran, whereas the Prime Minister, M. Ghavam-es-Sultaneh, was insistent that there should he “trustworthy and impartial security forces’’ present in Azerbaijan, as in every other province, when the polling began. In view of the irregularities which took place when the “parliament” set up in Tabriz last year was elected. M. Ghavam’s anxiety to ensure free and fair elections is understandable. According to the correspondent of The Times in Persia, few of the merchants or richer classes voted. Loads of voters were taken to the Tolls in Red Army trucks driven by Russian soldiers in uniform. Most of the voters were illiterate and their blank polling papers were filled in for them by the polling officers. One weakness in M. Ghavam’ case is that in the past the voting procedure in the rest of Persia has not been materially different. Although the Teheran authorities now assert that they are trying to institute a new era in democratic polling, it may be proving difficult to convince the leaders in Azerbaijan that this is so. Scope for a peaceful settlement seems to be severely limited.