Text of report by Azerbaijani TV station ANS on 22nd September

[Presenter in studio] The Azerbaijani Communist Party has
declared that the party is giving up its participation in the
municipal elections, boycotting the elections and quitting the
Socialist Azerbaijan electoral bloc. The party chairman, Ramiz
Akhmedov, told Trend news agency that the communists had taken
the decision after numerous infringements of the law had been
observed at the initial stage of the preparations for the
municipal elections. Ramiz Akhmedov said that the communists
did not want to participate in the authorities' game called
"elections". He said that nominees from the Communist Party had
not been allowed to participate in the lots-casting held to
form territorial electoral commissions. According to Akhmedov,
the communists have met with aggressive attitudes.
The secretary of the Central Electoral Commission [CEC],
Ilgar Abbasov, said that participation in the municipal
elections was not compulsory. He said that any individual and
organization decided itself whether to participate in the
elections or not. As for Ramiz Akhmedov's words that the
Communist Party members were not allowed to participate in the
lots-casting process for the formation of the territorial
electoral commissions, Abbasov said that he had not heard about
this. He noted that the CEC had not received any complaints
about the issue from Communist Party members. If any complaints
had been received from the communists they would have been
investigated as other complaints. Abbasov said that one
representative of the Communist Party had been elected a member
of a territorial electoral commission.

Source: ANS TV, Baku, in Azeri 1000 gmt 22 Sep 99
BBC Mon TCU 220999 km/la