Azerbaijan, Baku, 20 February / Trend corr S. Ilhamgizi / In March 2008, the delegation including the Azerbaijani NGO representatives, human rights activists and experts will visit Armenia as well as the occupied Nagorno-Karabakh, the Chair of the Azerbaijani National Committee of the Helsinki Civil Assembly Arzu Abdullayeva said to Trend.
According to Abdullayeva, the delegation will include 7-10 members - the experts on the Nagorno-Karabakh, NGO heads, as well as the journalists. Mainly, Nagorno-Karabakh residents will be included.
Initially, the delegation will visit Armenia, where it will participate in the conference 'Prospects for conflict settlement within the framework of integration into Europe', which is going to take place in Yerevan. After the conference, the Azerbaijani delegation will leave Armenia for Nagorno-Karabakh.
"We wanted to go to Karabakh via Azerbaijan and applied to the Foreign Ministry for the purpose. But the Ministry stated that it was not in its mandate and advised us to apply to the Border Troops. And the Border Troops said that it is not expedient to visit the occupied territory via Azerbaijan," she said.
According to Abdullayeva, the visit of NGO representatives to Armenia will aim at 'national diplomacy'. Its goal is to form a positive opinion about Azerbaijan and to show a civil attitude of Azerbaijanis to them.
"We hope that we will be able to coordinate some model for the peaceful regulation of the conflict. We need to exchange opinions with Armenians in this regard. We know that we can not achieve serious progress in the first stage, but hopefully our efforts will be success," the human rights activist.
He said that the meetings will be held with the ordinary Armenians and the talks are expected to be held with the officials as well, during the visit.
Abdullayeva said that the discussions and consultations will be held with the representatives of government bodies, Azerbaijani parliament and international organization, before the visit to Armenia.