Amnesty Press correspondent Izabella Rosengren’s visit to Azerbaijan’s Nagorno-Karabakh region occupied by Armenia is illegal, Hikmat Hajiyev, spokesperson for the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry told APA on Tuesday.
On August 15, Amnesty Press, the publication of Amnesty International, published an article on the Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. Amnesty Press correspondent Izabella Rosengren also paid an illegal visit to the occupied Nagorno-Karabakh region.
The Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry has received no appeal regarding [Rosengren’s visit], Hajiyev said, stressing that this article is biased and promotes the consequences of Armenia’s military aggression against Azerbaijan.
“Despite the fact that during the coverage of conflicts the objective media principles require taking into account the stances of both sides, unilateral propaganda was conducted in this article. This indicates that this article is custom-made,” added the spokesman.
The Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry is currently investigating the Amnesty Press correspondent’s visit to Nagorno-Karabakh, and her name can be added to the list of undesirable people.
The Nagorno-Karabakh conflict entered its modern phase when the Armenian SRR made territorial claims against the Azerbaijani SSR in 1988.
A fierce war broke out between Azerbaijan and Armenia over the Nagorno-Karabakh region of Azerbaijan. As a result of the war, Armenian armed forces occupied some 20 percent of Azerbaijani territory which includes Nagorno-Karabakh and seven adjacent districts (Lachin, Kalbajar, Aghdam, Fuzuli, Jabrayil, Gubadli and Zangilan), and over a million Azerbaijanis became refugees and internally displaced people.
The military operations finally came to an end when Azerbaijan and Armenia signed a ceasefire agreement in Bishkek in 1994.
Dealing with the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict is the OSCE Minsk Group, which was created after the meeting of the CSCE (OSCE after the Budapest summit held in December 1994) Ministerial Council in Helsinki on 24 March 1992. The Group’s members include Azerbaijan, Armenia, Russia, the United States, France, Italy, Germany, Turkey, Belarus, Finland and Sweden.
Besides, the OSCE Minsk Group has a co-chairmanship institution, comprised of Russian, the US and French co-chairs, which began operating in 1996.
Resolutions 822, 853, 874 and 884 of the UN Security Council, which were passed in short intervals in 1993, and other resolutions adopted by the UN General Assembly, PACE, OSCE, OIC, and other organizations require Armenia to unconditionally withdraw its troops from Nagorno-Karabakh.