Moscow Times: "Ex-Azeri leader begged for apartment"

Mutalibov left Baku aboard a Russian military plane just three months into his term. He is wanted in Azerbaijan on charges of negligence for an Armenian attack in February 1992 that killed hundreds of Azeris. Baku also accuses him of involvement in a coup plot in 2001.

Mutalibov, who dismissed the accusations as "political intrigue," said by telephone that one of the first things he did upon arriving in Moscow was to ask the Kremlin for a home.

The Presidential Property Department provided him with a state apartment in 1994, but he was not allowed to register there and had to apply for a new guest visa every 45 days, Mutalibov recalled. The government finally donated a four-room apartment to him and his family in 1997, in the remote district of Zhulebino, where he still lives.

In 1999, then-President Boris Yeltsin granted him the status of political refugee, and only at the end of last year did he receive a refugee card allowing him to travel abroad, Mutalibov said.

Despite the apartment problems, Mutalibov said he remained a friend of Russia. "We think that relations with Russia are a priority for Azerbaijan because we are neighbors that have long lived as a single country," he said. "We are linked by a lot of things -- for example, the fact that about 2 million of my countrymen live here."

During Mutalibov's short term as president, Azerbaijan joined the Commonwealth of Independent States, a loose group that replaced the Soviet Union.

Mutalibov said Russia had never tried to use him to influence Azeri politics and that he had not sought the Kremlin's support for his political ambitions. He heads the Social Democratic Party of Azerbaijan, which does not have any seats in the Azeri parliament.

Still a citizen of Azerbaijan, Mutalibov said he hoped to return to his home country.

"It is a disgrace that the first president of Azerbaijan has to live abroad," he said.

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