The business meeting of Assistant to the President of Azerbaijan Hikmat Hajiyev in Dilijan attracts attention. This is not the first visit of a high-ranking Azerbaijani official to Dilijan after the First Karabakh War.
“Elchi” reports with reference to Globalinfo.az that Armenian expert Voskan Sargsyan wrote about this.
He stated that years ago, the former Minister of Education of Azerbaijan also visited Armenia:
“That person was Misir Mardanov, who served as the Minister of Education of Azerbaijan from 1998 to 2013. He was born on October 3, 1946, in the village of Goyarchin in Dilijan. In 1997 or 1998 (actually, in 2001 – ed.), M. Mardanov came to Yerevan to participate in an international conference and expressed his desire to see his father’s house. He was given this opportunity.
Mardanov was in Aghavnavank (Salah – ed.) with the National Security Service of the Republic of Armenia. Those living in the house set a good table for the guest. Misir Mardanov expressed his satisfaction with the fact that such hospitable and kind people lived in their house. He took two handfuls of soil from their garden to take to Baku. On his way back, he also visited the school.”
V. Sargsyan noted that the Mardanovs’ ancestral home in Salah still stands out from the others:
“The former minister’s father, Jumayil Mardanov, was the chairman of the Salah collective farm. Their house was a two-story building befitting a collective farm chairman, decorated in Azerbaijani blue. Later, this house was sold to a Yerevan resident for 8,000 dollars.”