Hasan Hasanov

Hasan Aziz oglu Hasanov (born 1940, Tbilisi) is an Azerbaijani politician and diplomat. He served as Azerbaijan's last communist leader, as Prime Minister of that country from January 25 1990 until April 7 1992. He remained prime minister after the collapse of the Soviet Union and Azerbaijan's subsequent independence, but eventually resigned. During his time as Prime Minister, tensions developed with Armenia another newly independent nation, and ethnic Armenians in the Azerbaijani region of Nagorno-Karabakh which eventually developed into a full-scale war. In 1991 he became the Ambassador to UN, opened the first Azerbaijan embassy in New York.

When President Heydar Aliyev came to power in 1993, Hasanov was appointed foreign minister. He had to deal with Azerbaijan's complex relationships with many countries, particularly Armenia, Russia and Turkey. He remained foreign minister until February 1998 when Aliyev sacked him after it was found that he participated in a corrupt Turkish real estate deal.