Agence France Presse — English
January 28, 2005 Friday 3:36 PM GMT
OSCE to probe Azeri claims of illegal Armenian settlements in
Nagorno-Karabakh
BAKU
The Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) said
Friday that it had sent a team of investigators to Armenian-occupied
territories in and around Nagorno-Karabakh to verify Azerbaijan’s
claims that Armenia is illegally settling the area which it considers
to be its own.
“The Azeri side raised the issue at the UN and all agreed to verify
the Azeri claim, to see what is actually happening,” the OSCE’s
representative on the dispute, Andrzej Kasprzyk, told AFP.
Azerbaijan has accused Armenia of illegally settling areas its
neighbor captured during a 1990s war for control of the mountainous
region, internationally recognized to be a part of Azerbaijan.
The OSCE mission, which from Sunday will tour Karabakh and seven
other Azeri regions under Armenian occupation, represents the first
international effort to document Armenian settlement of the areas.
The Karabakh war erupted before the fall of the Soviet Union in 1988
and escalated after Armenia and Azerbaijan became independent, ending
in a ceasefire in 1994 with over one million people displaced and
25,000 killed.
The tense standoff is frequently punctuated by cross-border
shootouts. Azeri media reported that Armenian forces fired on an
Azeri position Thursday, while on Wednesday one Azeri soldier was
reported killed.
Azerbaijan has fought for international recognition of Armenia as the
“aggressor party” to the Karabakh conflict, a charge that Armenian
authorities deny.
“Armenia argues that those territories do not historically belong to
Azerbaijan,” Azeri deputy foreign minister Araz Azimov said Friday.
Azimov called the settlement of the occupied territories a
“calculated plan that is being put into practice with the help and
participation of Armenia.”
Foreign ministry officials gave the OSCE mission a sheaf of documents
including video footage and photos they hope will verify Armenian
settlement of the area at a meeting in Baku.
The Vienna-based OSCE, which includes the United States as well as
European and central Asian nations, is particularly active in
monitoring elections.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress