ARMENIAN FM ACCUSES AZERBAIJAN AT UNESCO

AssA-Irada
October 8, 2009 Thursday
Azerbaijan

Armenian Foreign Minister Eduard Nalbandian has leveled accusations
against Azerbaijan at a UNESCO conference, claiming the South Caucasus
neighbor is consistently destroying Armenian cultural heritage,
his press-service said. One of the examples of this is the complete
wiping-out of the Jugi cemetery in Nakhchivan [Azerbaijans Nakhchivan
Autonomous Republic] with its unique fine hachkars dating back to the
9-16th centuries, which testified to the skills and talent of the Jugi
craftsmen. Nalbandian pointed out that no war was being waged in 1998
and 2005 — recalling the hostilities between Azerbaijan and Armenia
that ended with a cease-fire in 1994 — when these giant monuments
were demolished, loaded onto railway carriages and eliminated under
the watchful eye of the Armenian government.

According to Nalbandian, in 2005, the huge cultural monument was
leveled by bulldozers and turned into a military school as a result
of the actions taken on the authorities orders. Neither was there a
war in 1975 when a 7th-century Armenian church was fully destroyed
in the center of Nakhchivan with the sole purpose of eliminating the
traces of the Armenians, who accounted for a majority in Nakhchivan
several decades ago, Nalbandian claimed. The conflict between the two
South Caucasus republics reared up in the late 1980s due to Armenia’s
territorial claims. Armenia has been occupying over 20 percent of
Azerbaijan’s internationally-recognized territory since the early
1990s. According to the Hague Convention, in case of occupation of one
countrys territory by another, the destruction of material and cultural
heritage there is unacceptable. However, Armenia has destroyed a huge
number of Azerbaijani historical and cultural monuments in the occupied
land in the past years. The Azerbaijani government has appealed,
at different times, to UNESCO, the OSCE and UN offices in Baku over
Armenian vandalism. Though a visit by an OSCE monitoring mission to
the territories under occupation, as well as Armenia and Nakhchivan,
had been planned several years ago, it was later postponed after
Armenian protests. Yerevan insisted that the monitoring be carried out
only to examine the plight of hachkars in Nakhchivan. The monuments
that are presented as Armenian hachkars actually belong to Caucasus
Albania and have not been destroyed. Armenians are trying to reinforce
their territorial claims to Nakhchivan by inscribing the monuments to
themselves. According to researchers, Armenians began moving to the
South Caucasus after Russia and Iran signed the Turkmenchay Treaty
in 1828, and their link to the ancient Alban khachkars is out of
the question.