Paul
Goble
Staunton, July 5 – Kemaleddin Pirmuezin,
chairman of the Iranian parliament’s environmental protection committee, says
that waste from the Armenian atomic energy station and an Armenian aluminum
processing plant is flowing into the Arax River and producing 1,000 cases of
cancer every year among those who live on that trans-border river’s banks.
“These actions of a neighboring country,”
the Iranian deputy says, “are disturbing our people. This is impermissible, and
Iran and Armenia must find an acceptable means for saving the Arax River and
preserving the environment” (turkist.org/2015/07/armenia-iran-azerbaijan-aras-river.html).
The Arax, the longest river in the southern
Caucaus, rises in eastern Turkey, flows along the Turkish-Armenian border,
along the southern border of Azerbaijan’s Nakhchivan Republic, and then along
the Iranian-Azerbaijani border. After that it joins the Kura River and falls
into the Caspian Sea.
In the past, the use of its water by
countries along its banks has been a source of controversy, but this new charge
by an Iranian deputy is disturbing not only on its face but because it will
recall to Azerbaijanis, given that Turkist.org cited a Baku source for its
story, a concern they had at the start of the Karabakh war.
Many Azerbaijanis feared that the
Armenians would pollute rivers rising in Nagorno-Karabakh and the other
Armenian-occupied territories and that this would have a negative impact on the
health and well-being of Azerbaijanis far from that zone. Indeed, Soviet forces
were at one point introduced at least in part to block the construction of an
aluminum plant.
Anything that recalls that tragic history will
only exacerbate tensions in the area.
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