Police in Baku break up anti-Iranian protest

Police dragged about a dozen demonstrators of Azerbaijan's Popular Front party into jeeps as they chanted "Tabriz!", the name of the capital of Iran's East Azerbaijan province, which has a majority ethnic Azeri population, AFP reported.

Azerbaijani opposition parties and Iranian Azeri dissident groups claim that scores of Azeris were killed and hundreds arrested during protests that erupted in Tabriz after an Iranian newspaper printed an offensive cartoon in May. Those claims could not be verified independently.

"The Iranian government has recently staged mass repressions against our countrymen," a Popular Front statement read out at the demonstration said.

"The battle of South Azeri Turks for their rights takes place under very difficult circumstances. According to our sources, tens of activists have already been executed," the Popular Front said.

Up to 26 million Iranians are ethnic Azeri, dwarfing the population of Azerbaijan itself, which numbers around eight million people. Azeris speak a language close to Turkish, but as Shiite Muslims they also share a religion with Iran's Farsi population.

"We want to see Azerbaijan and South Azerbaijan (Iranian Azerbaijan) united into one country in the same way that the Americans gave the Kurds their freedom in Iraq," an elderly protestor, Jafar Bakhir, said.

Iranian officials have blamed the West for stoking tensions between Iran's Farsi and Turkic-speaking populations but the United States has denied involvement.

"The Iranian regime is known for its deplorable human rights record and brutal responses to public dissent. To blame the US for sponsorship of this domestic discontent is simply misguided and untrue," a US official in Baku told AFP.

Relations between Baku and Tehran have not always been smooth because Azerbaijan, once part of the Soviet Union, receives military aid from the United States, while hosting scores of Western oil companies developing its Caspian Sea oil deposits.

Although Azerbaijan has good relations with Washington, it also sits on Iran's northern border and is anxious to maintain friendly ties with Tehran.

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