Baku, Azerbaijan, May 8
By Ilhama Isabalayeva - Trend:
Efforts of the OSCE Minsk Group to resolve the Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict don’t yield results, because there is no desire to achieve them, First Vice Speaker of the Azerbaijani Parliament Ziyafat Asgarov said.
He was speaking May 8 in Baku at the second session of the 15th meeting of the EU-Azerbaijan Parliamentary Cooperation Committee.
“The OSCE MG has been imposed on us, it does nothing to resolve the conflict,” he noted. “The OSCE MG co-chairs only visit Azerbaijan and Armenia, but to no avail.”
He added that the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict should be approached from the point of view of international law.
“If this were true, we wouldn’t have faced such problems today,” he said. “Europe speaks of democracy, but in reality we don’t see it.”
Ziyafat Asgarov once again reminded that Nagorno-Karabakh is a native land of Azerbaijan.
“It’s easy to solve the problem, so what’s the matter?” he asked. “Does this conflict have to last for 30 years? Internally displaced persons must return to their lands. Must it take 50 years for them to return to their lands?!”
He noted that today sanctions are applied against a number of countries.
“However, when it comes to the Armenia-Azerbaijan relations, no sanctions are imposed against Armenia,” Asgarov said.
He noted that the state policy of Armenia is a policy of terror.
“Will a sane person be able to come to power after Sargsyan in Armenia? They made the Armenian people hostage for the sake of aggressive policy,” he said.
Asgarov stressed that Azerbaijani lands must be liberated so that peace is established in the region.
“Armenia must abandon its aggressive policy, but it doesn’t recognize international law,” he said, adding that terrorists are being trained in Nagorno-Karabakh region.
He noted that Azerbaijan’s occupied territories are used for the cultivation, transit of drugs and their sale in the markets of Europe.
“This is not only Azerbaijan’s problem, but a common problem,” he said.
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.