AzerNews, Azerbaijan
Nov. 4, 2004
UN to discuss Upper Garabagh conflict
The United Nations has considered the request submitted by the
permanent representative of Azerbaijan to include a provision on the
situation with the occupied Azerbaijani lands into the agenda of its
December session. The UN General Assembly approved putting the issue on
discussion by 42 votes, 2 against (including Armenia), with 99 members
abstaining.
Azerbaijan stated that the ongoing conflict has led to the occupation
of a considerable portion of the country’s territories and ousting a
great a number of people from their homes, and inflicted serious damage
to the Azeri economy. The document submitted by Azerbaijan says that
‘the actions by the OSCE Minsk Group dealing with the Upper Garabagh
problem have not yielded any results,
as illegal activity is going on in these territories, notably,
Armenians are being settled there in order to artificially alter the
demographic situation’.
A representative of France, speaking on behalf the OSCE MG, which also
includes USA and Russia, said that due to the efforts of the Minsk
group, the parties are engaged in talks, and proposed to continue
working in this direction. Stating the OSCE MG position on Azerbaijan’s
proposal to include the mentioned issue into the meeting agenda, he
said this may negatively affect the efforts aimed at settling the
conflict.
Commenting on the issue, Russian Foreign Ministry officials stated that
consideration of the Upper Garabagh conflict at the meeting will not
positively influence peace talks.
“Russia abstained from voting, along with the other OSCE Minsk Group
co-chairs. We believe that consideration of the issue at the UN General
Assembly session, along with the OSCE, is not likely to favorably
affect the process of negotiations”, the same source said and added
that the results of the vote indicate that most of international
community adhere to the same position.