Baku, Azerbaijan, May 8
Trend:
Argentine journalist Ricardo Marquina Montanana was withdrawn from the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry’s list of people declared personae non gratae, said the Foreign Ministry.
He wrote a letter to the Embassy of Azerbaijan in Argentina, in which he expressed respect for Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity, sovereignty and inviolability of its internationally recognized borders.
The journalist also stated that he visited the occupied territories as he was uninformed about the illegality of such a visit.
In his letter, he apologized to the people of Azerbaijan and noted that his visit did not mean to promote the illegal regime created in the occupied Azerbaijani territories.
The journalist’s appeal was reviewed and it was decided to exclude him from the Foreign Ministry’s list of people declared personae non gratae.
Visits to Nagorno-Karabakh and other Armenian-occupied regions of Azerbaijan, uncoordinated with the Azerbaijani side, are deemed illegal and the names of the visitors are included in the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry’s list of people declared personae non gratae.
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.