Baku, Azerbaijan, Feb. 4
By Seba Aghayeva – Trend:
Azerbaijan urges Carl Bildt, former prime minister of Sweden, promote not the religious and cultural division in Europe but the inter-civilizational and interreligious dialogue and multiculturalism in the conditions of the modern world, Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry’s Spokesman Hikmat Hajiyev told Trend.
This is what Europe and the world need more today, Hajiyev said.
On Feb. 4, Bildt posted a religious map of Europe on his Twitter account. The territory of Nagorno-Karabakh on the map was indicated as a territory with Christian population.
Posting a map, where the territory of Azerbaijan’s Nagorno-Karabakh region, occupied by Armenia, marked with a different color, is a denial of the millennial cultural and religious heritage of indigenous Azerbaijanis who were exiled from these territories as a result of bloody ethnic cleansing and Armenian occupation, said Hajiyev.
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.