Azerbaijan, Baku / Trend corr. S.Ilhamgizi / Karabakh Liberation Organization (KLO) denounces the next visit of the Azerbaijani Cultural Delegations to the Azerbaijani occupied territories by Armenian Armed Forces.
The Armenian Ambassador to Russia, Armen Smbatyan, said new visit of Azerbaijani and Armenian Cultural Delegations is expected to Karabakh. However, the exact number of the visits has not been defined yet.
Azerbaijani and Armenian cultural delegations visited the occupied Khankandi and Shusha, then visited Baku and Yerevan by initiative of the Azerbaijani and Armenian Embassies on 28 July 2007.
Armenians are interested in such visits; Armenian side wants to improve the tense relations with Azerbaijan and to prevent the world attention from facts of occupation.
The Organization considers that the representatives of the Azerbaijani delegations should not become a tool of the Armenian policy and refuse to visits the occupied territories.
The conflict between the two countries of South Caucasus began in 1988 due to territorial claims by Armenia against Azerbaijan. Armenia has occupied 20% of the Azerbaijani land including the Nagorno-Karabakh region and its seven surrounding Districts. Since 1992, these territories have been under the occupation of the Armenian Forces. In 1994, Azerbaijan and Armenia signed a ceasefire agreement at which time the active hostilities ended. The Co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group ( Russia, France and USA) are currently holding peaceful negotiations.
The KLO was established in Baku on 28 January 2000, with the objective of a public struggle for the liberation of Nagorno-Karabakh. KLO unites representatives of Cultural delegataions, refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs), old and young people as well as former military soldiers.