Baku, Azerbaijan, July 8
Trend:
The Warsaw NATO Summit 2016 is a good platform to attract the world community’s attention to the Armenian-Azerbaijani Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, Fikrat Sadikhov, Azerbaijani political analyst, professor of Azerbaijan’s Western University, told Trend July 8.
The NATO summit is being held in Warsaw July 8-9.
"Inviting of Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev for the Warsaw NATO summit is a positive, fact,” he said. “This fact testifies that the members of this military-political alliance today are interested in the active participation of a number of the CIS countries in the NATO’s events on a global scale and being closer to the values which are fundamental to this military-political bloc."
Sadikhov added that the fact that the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict is expected to be discussed at the summit is a positive aspect of the agenda, which will give Azerbaijan an opportunity to draw the attention of the world community, the countries leaders to the problems of separatism, terrorism, the occupied territories and the unresolved Armenian-Azerbaijani Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.
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 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 the Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding districts.
"This is very important from the point of view of updating the world community on the problems we have faced,” he added. “Moreover, I am sure that this will not be just a call for serious attitude to Azerbaijan’s problems. This will be a call for active participation in the conflict settlement, putting pressure on aggressor Armenia.
“This appeal will remind of the fact that more than 20 percent of Azerbaijan’s territories have been occupied for more than twenty years."
“Azerbaijan's cooperation with NATO is not directed against any country,” he said. “The main issue for us at the summit is to discuss the urgent Nagorno-Karabakh problem and actively strive for drawing attention of the leading countries, which will participate in the summit, to the conflict’s settlement.”
Azerbaijan is contributing to NATO’s peacekeeping operations in Afghanistan and facilites transportation of NATO’s cargo to Afghanistan.
Some 90 Azerbaijani peacekeepers serve in NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan. More than a quarter of shipments for NATO in Afghanistan are carried out by Azerbaijan.