NEW-YORK TIMES JOURNALIST INCLUDED IN LIST OF UNDESIRABLE PERSONS OF AZERBAIJANI MINISTRY
Trend, Azerbaijan
April 10 2015
Baku, Azerbaijan, April 10
By Seba Aghayeva – Trend:
New-York Times journalist Seth Kugel has been included in the list
of undesirable persons of the Azerbaijani foreign ministry for an
illegal visit to the occupied territories of Azerbaijan, spokesman
for the Azerbaijani foreign ministry Hikmet Hajiyev told Trend.
“An article of the journalist, distorting the real situation in the
occupied territories of Azerbaijan, is disrespectful to the readers of
the newspaper,” Hajiyev said. “It is also disrespectful to the rights
of more than one million Azerbaijani refugees and internally displaced
persons who have been subjected to the bloody ethnic cleansing in the
occupied territories. It is regrettable that such an article appeared
in New-York Times.”
Hajiyev was commenting on the journalist’s illegal visit to the
occupied territories of Azerbaijan.
Hajiyev said that the facts of looting the property in the occupied
territories belonging to Azerbaijani people, destruction of samples of
material culture, Islamic monuments and shrines were not purposefully
reflected in the article written by the order of the Armenian lobby.
“I would like to remind the management of New-York Times, which
published this biased article about the “tourist” trips to the occupied
territories, that such transnational crimes as human trafficking,
production and sale of drugs, illicit arms trafficking, training of
terrorists are committed in these territories,” he said.
The conflict between the two South Caucasus countries began in
1988 when Armenia made territorial claims against Azerbaijan. As a
result of the ensuing war, in 1992 Armenian armed forces occupied
20 percent of Azerbaijan, including the Nagorno-Karabakh region and
seven surrounding districts.
The two countries signed a ceasefire agreement in 1994. The co-chairs
of the OSCE Minsk Group, Russia, France and the US are currently
holding peace negotiations. Armenia has not yet implemented the
UN Security Council’s four resolutions on the liberation of the
Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding regions.