BAKU, Azerbaijan, Oct.7
Trend:
Negotiations on the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict are meaningless under the current policy of Armenia, Azerbaijani Ambassador to Russia Polad Bulbuloglu said in his interview to TASS, Trend reports.
According to Bulbuloglu, during the recent phone talks between Azerbaijani and Russian Foreign Ministers Jeyhun Bayramov and Sergey Lavrov, the Russian side stressed the need for the conflict parties to return to the negotiating process as soon as possible.
"However, in a situation when the armed forces of Armenia, expanding the geography of hostilities, provocatively attack cities and districts of Azerbaijan, not surrounding Nagorno Karabakh, grossly violate international law and commit, as I said earlier, war crimes, conducting of any negotiations has no sense," he said.
"[Azerbaijan's] President Ilham Aliyev made it clear in his recent interviews that until Armenia, bearing all responsibility for the conflict’s escalation, doesn’t begin respecting international law, international mediators don’t give reliable guarantees for the de-occupation of the territory and don’t present a specific schedule for the withdrawal of the Armenian Armed Forces from all the occupied territories of Azerbaijan, the cessation of hostilities and any negotiations are impossible," the ambassador emphasized.
Armenian Armed Forces launched a large-scale military attack on positions of Azerbaijani army on the front line, using large-caliber weapons, mortars and artillery on Sept. 27.
Azerbaijan responded with a counter-offensive along the entire front. As a result of retaliation, Azerbaijani troops liberated a number of territories previously occupied by Armenia, as well as take important, strategic heights under control.
The fighting continued into October 2020, in the early days of which Armenia has launched missile attacks on Azerbaijani cities of Ganja, Mingachevir, Khizi as well as Absheron district.
On October 6th, at about 9 pm (GMT+4), Armenian Armed Forces launched missiles at Azerbaijani Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline, the largest strategic project in the region, which plays an important role in Europe's energy security. Azerbaijani army was able to disable the missiles in the air, so no damage was done to the pipeline.
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, 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 the withdrawal of its armed forces from Nagorno Karabakh and the surrounding districts.