Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct. 5
Trend:
The position of the current authorities of Armenia is nothing more than self-deception and misleading of its own people, spokesperson for the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry Leyla Abdullayeva said, answering a question from the media, Trend reports.
In response to a question regarding the last comment of the press service of the Foreign Ministry of Armenia, where the thesis about the interests of the “people of Nagorno-Karabakh” was again voiced, Abdullayeva stated that Azerbaijan’s position was repeatedly voiced on this issue.
“President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev in his speech within the Valdai Discussion Club quite clearly and decisively spoke about this,” she noted. “The position of the current authorities of Armenia is nothing more than self-deception and misleading of its own people, however it is impossible to deceive the international community. It is obvious that there is an urgent need for leadership of Armenia to carefully study the international documents adopted as part of the settlement process of the Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, as well as statements by the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs.”
“None of the documents on the conflict’s settlement uses the concept of “people” regarding the population of the Nagorno-Karabakh region of Azerbaijan,” she said. “In this regard, I would like to remind that both the joint statement of the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs and the relevant agreements of the two parties to the conflict referred to by the press service of the Armenian Foreign Ministry clearly note the necessity to prepare the populations for peace. The president of Azerbaijan in an accessible and clear form noted that there is no concept of “the people of Nagorno-Karabakh”, there are the Azerbaijani and Armenian populations in this region of Azerbaijan.”
“If the Armenian side is really interested in the victory of democracy in this region, then Armenia, as a country that really controls the occupied Azerbaijani territories, should, first of all, withdraw its troops from these territories and not prevent the return of the forcibly expelled Azerbaijani population there, and this will serve to ensuring its legal and democratic rights,” said Abdullayeva.
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, Armenian armed forces occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan, including the Nagorno-Karabakh region and seven surrounding districts.
The 1994 ceasefire agreement was followed by peace negotiations. Armenia has not yet implemented four UN Security Council resolutions on withdrawal of its armed forces from Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding districts.
