Azerbaijan was unable to participate in Eurovision without Karabakh
http://www.yerkirmedia.am/?act=news&lan=en&id=7404
14:25 . 28/05
Sweden's representative Loreen won in the Eurovision-2012 Song Contest
with her `Euphoria'. Thus, Eurovision-2013 will be held in Stockholm.
Sweden hosted Eurovision Song Contest in 1999. As it was expected,
Buranovo Grannies representing Russia showed high results coming the
second after Loreen. Serbia's ZeljkoYoksimovic was the third.
26 countries- Lithuania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia, Ukraine, Sweden,
Macedonia, Norway, Estonia, Malta, Turkey, Romania, Moldova, Iceland,
Hungary, Denmark, Albania, Cyprus, Greece, Russia, Ireland, Great
Britain, Spain, France, Germany, Italy and the hosting country
Azerbaijan participated in the final.
Azerbaijan gained the right to host the contest owing to Eldar Gasimov
and Nigar Camal duet in Eurovision-2011.
Armenia refused to participate in Eurovision-2012 saying it is not
rational to participate in a song contest in a country, which shows
hostile attitude towards our country.
To note, Armenia's public TV aired the song contest though till the
start of the final it was still not known whether it would air the
contest or not. In this respect the public TV has also circulated a
statement, which says the public TV didn't finally confirm it would
air the contest, as there was no confidence it would meet the contest
standards and wouldn't include deviations of contents. The speech
particularly refers to Nagorno-Karabakh: `There was a fear and that
fear was confirmed by the materials sent to the commentators, from
which it became clear that Azerbaijan's introductory `postcard' is
called Karabakh. It was said in the `postcard' that Karabakh is one of
the cultural centres of Azerbaijan, Shushi was mentioned, etc.
The public TV complained against the contents of the `postcard'. The
European Broadcasting Union promised to change it by means of the host
country. EBU Media Director Annika Nyberg Frankenhauser stated they
admit that mentioning the topic of Nagorno-Karabakh will bring about
political discussions, which contradicts the rules of Eurovision song
contest.
Then they told from Azerbaijan to the Europeans that by saying
Karabakh they didn't bear in mind Nagorno-Karabakh but a larger
territory. EBU assured us that the clip would be aired in an edited
version, without political hints. One can at least understand from all
this that at least in this plane Azerbaijan's pretensions for Artsakh
face suppression by the Europeans.'