YEREVAN, March 18. /TASS/. Azerbaijan’s latest aggressive remarks and actions demonstrate that it is preparing for an act of genocide against the Armenian population of Nagorno-Karabakh and a new act of aggression against Armenia, the Armenian foreign ministry said.
"The assessment of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Armenia is clear: with its aggressive discourse and actions Azerbaijan makes preparations for subjecting the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh to genocide and for a new aggression against Armenia," the ministry said in a statement.
According to the statement, Azerbaijani President Ilkham Aliyev said "there will be no peace treaty" while visiting the village of Talish in Nagorno-Karabakh, whose Armenian population had to flee their homes amid the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan.
"In Talish, as well as in other regions depopulated by the 44-day war, Azerbaijan is openly implementing resettlement programs in an attempt to eliminate the Armenian trace from the territories of Nagorno-Karabakh that have passed under its control. At the beginning of the 1990s, Shahumyan region, Getashen sub-region and other settlements with a large Armenian population also suffered a similar fate," the ministry said.
"The above-mentioned actions of Azerbaijan are in direct contradiction to the point 7 of the trilateral statement of November 9, 2020, according to which internally displaced persons and refugees shall return to the Nagorno-Karabakh territory and adjacent regions under the control of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees," the statement says. "With the policy of illegal resettlement and the practice of terrorizing the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh, official Baku is doing everything to make the implementation of the above-mentioned provision of the trilateral statement impossible."
According to Armenia, Azerbaijan continues gross violations of the trilateral and quadrilateral statements adopted in various formats, and "in practice there is not a single clause in those statements that Azerbaijan has not violated."
Yerevan believes that in the current situation, it is necessary to launch international mechanisms for the prevention of genocides, send an international fact-finding mission to the Lachin corridor and Nagorno-Karabakh, as well as to directly condemn Azerbaijan's aggressive actions and policies.
The situation in Nagorno-Karabakh escalated on September 27, 2020. On November 9, 2020, Russian President Vladimir Putin, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan signed a joint statement on the full cessation of hostilities.
The sides stopped at their positions at that moment, a number of districts went under Baku’s control, and Russian peacekeepers were deployed at the contact line and at the so-called Lachin Corridor, the road linking Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh.