Baku, Azerbaijan, Apr. 12
Trend:
Azerbaijan retains all the rights to restore its violated territorial integrity by all possible means if negotiations don’t yield any results, said Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov.
He was addressing a meeting of ministers of foreign affairs of Visegrad (V4) Group and Eastern Partnership (EaP), held in Warsaw, Poland, Apr. 12.
The future of EaP strongly depends on lasting security, peace and stability in the regions that have suffered from conflicts, he said.
“Azerbaijan is interested in a negotiated settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and a roadmap based on principles of international law,” Mammadyarov noted, adding this is particularly enshrined in the Global Strategy for the EU Foreign and Security Policy 2016.
“However, the country keeps all the rights to restore its violated territorial integrity by all possible means in its disposal if already decades-old negotiations do not yield any results.”
As it has repeatedly been stated, the Azerbaijani government is ready to provide all guarantees for the coexistence of both Armenian and Azerbaijani communities of the Nagorno-Karabakh region, Mammadyarov said.
“Contrary to Azerbaijan’s attempts to find a solution to the conflict, Armenia is continuously conducting a purposeful policy of changing the demographic nature of the occupied territories, as well as fabricating illegal “elections” or “referendums” in the occupied Nagorno-Karabakh. The most recent illegal “referendum” in the occupied territories proved to be yet another provocative attempt against the constitutional order of the Republic of Azerbaijan. This illegal action has been rejected by the international community. The April events of 2016 and the most recent provocation on the Line of Contact on February 25, 2017, proved the fragility of the “no war, no peace” situation,” said Mammadyarov.
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.