Local Communist Leader Resigns After Unrest in Soviet Azerbaijan

The local Communist Party leader in the Nakhichevan region of Soviet Azerbaijan has resigned following violence along the border with Iran, a Soviet official said Friday.

The official reason given for Geider Isayev’s resigning was his health. However, a regional Foreign Ministry spokesman, Ismail Agayev, left no doubt that the action resulted from the border unrest, which broke out New Year’s Eve.

“You know what is happening in Nakhichevan,” Agayev said when asked why Isayev stepped down.

The protesters are demanding the opening of border areas for cultivation and the establishment of easier contacts with Iran’s northern Azerbaijan province, which is peopled by their ethnic kin, local officials say.

Soviet television Friday showed pictures of frontier installations destroyed in nearly a week of turmoil.

The senior border guard in the region, V. Zhukov, told Soviet television that the border system has “practically broken down. It is impossible to maintain normal security.”

The region has been closed to foreign journalists. On Thursday, it was reported that the protests were calming down, but fresh reports Friday contradicted that account.

In the Azerbaijani capital of Baku, local officials said 10,000 people demonstrated Thursday in support of the protesters in Nakhichevan. Other accounts gave higher figures.

One local journalist said about 30,000 demonstrators gathered in Nakhichevan and then marched to the border and “ripped up what had not been destroyed Dec. 31.”