MOSCOW: He was the first post-Soviet president of Azerbaijan, and from his exile in Moscow today Ayaz Mutalibov says the oil-rich republic’s current rulers resist his return because they fear him as a viable opponent in November’s parliamentary elections. “The fact that I can’t take part in the social and political life of my country as a citizen is total nonsense, and it depends on the authorities who prefer to keep me away by any means,” Mutalibov said in an interview here earlier this week.

Mutalibov, who has lived in Moscow without so much as a passport ever since a nationalist coalition forced him to resign in the turbulent days following the collapse of the Soviet Union, said the current Azeri authorities were personally unwilling “to have a political opponent.”

Sitting on billons of dollars worth of proven oil deposits, Azerbaijan has become a key link in a US-backed energy corridor that spans Turkey and Central Asia on one hand and separates Russia from traditional ties to regimes in the Middle East on the other.

Tensions between the Azeri opposition and the regime of President Ilham Aliyev are heating up in the run up to the November elections with the opposition and rights groups alleging that the government is stifling freedoms necessary to guarantee a legitimate vote.

Observers fear the election could turn into a repeat of the 2003 presidential elections when Aliyev replaced his ailing father as president after a contested poll, leading to mass protests and clashes with police.

Mutalibov, who is wanted in Azerbaijan on murky charges alleging that he did not do enough to prevent a massacre of Azeris by Armenians during the Nagorny Karabakh war, is one of many political emigrants afraid to return to their homeland.

A co-chairman of the Social Democratic party, Mutalibov has joined a block of four parties which has announced it will field single candidates for the vote, but complains the government has put in place barriers to prevent candidates from registering for the poll.—AFP