Baku Today
July 29 2004

Armenian FM Official Warns Azerbaijan against Resorting to Force

Armenia’s Foreign Ministry spokesman on Wednesday warned Azerbaijan
against attempting to regain its occupied territories by force,
threatening that any such attempt could turn out to be `catastrophic’
for the latter.

“We have repeatedly stated that the ramifications of any attempt to
resolve the Nagorno-Karabakh problem by force will be catastrophic
for the whole region and first of all, for Azerbaijan,” Gamlet
Gasparyan told reporters in Yerevan, Armenia’s Mediamax news agency
reported.

Gasparyan noted that the Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev’s recent
statement that his nation would fight back the occupied territories
should the peace negotiations prove fruitless `is a matter of serious
concern.’

President Aliyev on Tuesday told a meeting of Azerbaijani diplomats
in Baku that his country wouldn’t go for any compromise on its
territorial integrity.

`The international law is on our side… Justice is on our side.
Economic potential and other issues are also in favor of Azerbaijan,’
President Aliyev said, warning that if the peace talks mediated by
the Minsk group of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in
Europe (OSCE) give no results, Azerbaijan will resort to force.

Armenia has been occupying Nagorno-Karabakh – a western Azeri region
that is home to about 100,000 ethnic-Armenians – along with seven
other regions, Lachin Kelbajar, Aghdam, Fuzuli, Jebrail, Zengilan and
Qubadli, since 1991-94 war. The territories make up for one-fifth of
the country’s total area.

Peace talks launched by the Minsk group in 1992 have yielded no
result while over 700,000 Azerbaijani citizens forced out of their
homes in the occupied regions are suffering in tent camps built in
inner regions of the country.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress