Azerbaijan, Baku, June 16 / Trend K. Zarbaliyeva /
An Azerbaijani official has accused international organizations of double standards.
"Azerbaijan fulfills all the decisions," Deputy Prime Minister, Chairman of the State
Committee for Refugees and IDPs Ali Hasanov told media in an interview within the IX
International Conference of Ombudsmen this week.
If Azerbaijan respectsinternational institutions, asopposed to Armenia, he said, then
why both countries are treated in the same plane? This attitude is also a double standard.
Azerbaijanis driven out of Armenia are refugees and migrants, he said.
"Their legal status is a refugee," he said. "But on the other hand, I think that they are
still foreign, political migrants. I think that we can analyze this parallel. Some statuses can be united."
He stressed certain parallels between the problems of refugees and internally displaced people and migrants. "I think that the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and the International Organization for Migration must work together in this direction," he said.
The conflict between the two South Caucasus countries began in 1988 when Armenia made territorial claims against Azerbaijan. Armenian armed forces have occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan since 1992, including the Nagorno-Karabakh region and seven surrounding districts.
Azerbaijan and Armenia signed a ceasefire agreement in 1994. The co-chairs of the OSCE MinskGroup - Russia, France, and the U.S. - are currently holding the peace negotiations.
Armenia has not yet implemented the U.N. Security Council's four resolutions on the liberation of Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding regions.