| BAKU: Azerbaijan does not plan to take part in a US military campaign against Iran or deploy US military bases on its territory, said Novruz Mamedov, the head of the country's presidential international affairs department, interfax reported on Thursday. "These rumours have nothing to do with the real state of affairs," Interfax quoted him as saying. Mamedov also dismissed rumours of Azerbaijan's involvement in a US campaign against Iran as "highly exaggerated". On Wednesday, the Russian newspaper Nezavisimaya Gazeta had reported that Azerbaijan was close to agreement with Washington on the establishment of a US military presence following the eviction of American forces from Uzbekistan. The paper cited a source in the Azerbaijani security forces as saying that a team of US military instructors was already in the country looking at two possible sites for hosting the US military, one close to the capital Baku and the other close to the border with Iran. The former Soviet republic of Azerbaijan could represent a highly strategic location for US forces, in part because it borders Iran %u2013 one of the countries named by US President Bush in his first term as forming an "axis of evil", the Russian newspaper reported. |