Baku, Azerbaijan, June 28
By Seba Aghayeva - Trend:
France is committed to the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan, and the statements of the former French co-chair of OSCE Minsk Group Jacques Faure are nothing more than a personal opinion of a retired person, Director of the Department of Continental Europe of the Foreign Ministry of France, Ambassador Eric Fournier said in an interview with Azerbaijani Ambassador to Paris Elchin Amirbayov.
Amirbayov himself told Trend about this fact June 28.
Azerbaijani embassy earlier appealed to the French Foreign Ministry in connection with the anti-Azerbaijani statements made by former French co-chair of the OSCE Minsk Group Jacques Faure June 19 at the 89th Rose-Roth seminar of NATO Parliamentary Assembly held in Yerevan, according to some Armenian news agencies.
Eric Fournier told the ambassador Elchin Amirbayov that the position of official Paris on the Armenian-Azerbaijani Nagorno-Karabakh conflict remains unchanged, and France remains committed to supporting the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan.
"Jacques Faure is now retired, he does not take up any official position and in no way can express the official position of France," Amirbayov said with reference to senior French diplomat. "As for the statements by Jacques Faure in Yerevan, even if he made these statements in a way Armenian media reported, they remained unnoticed in Paris, and we must treat them as a personal opinion of a retired person."
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 two countries signed a ceasefire agreement in 1994. The co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group, Russia, France and the US are currently holding peace negotiations. Armenia has not yet implemented the UN Security Council's four resolutions on the liberation of the Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding regions.
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