ANKARA Former Azerbaijan president Abdulfaz Elcibey died in a Turkish hospital of prostate cancer early on Tuesday, Azerbaijan Embassy officials told Reuters. Elcibey, a nationalist academic who campaigned against Soviet rule in the oil-rich Caucasian republic, became the second president of independent Azerbaijan in 1992. His rule saw massive battleground defeat in the war with the breakaway enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh ending with Karabakh Armenians controlling both the province and much of Azerbaijan proper.
Some one million Azeris became internal refugees. He was then overthrown in a 1993 military coup which resulted in the country's present leader, President Haydar Aliyev, coming to power. Aliyev soon signed a cease-fire with the breakaway province. It is believed that Turkey had to support ejther the current Azeri President Aliyev or the former rival Elcibey. As TEHRAN TIMES had earlier predicted and was expected, Turkey at least announced that Elcibey's died due to illness.
(Reuter)