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Foreign Ministry: In recent decades Armenia prevented international missions to visit the occupied territories of Azerbaijan

16 January 2021 06:49 (UTC +04:00)

Leyla Abdullayeva, spokeswoman for the Foreign Ministry, commented on the statement made by the representative of the Armenian Foreign Ministry to the speech of the President of the Republic of Azerbaijan during the meeting with the Director General of ICESCO, the Foreign Ministry's press service told APA.

"In his speech at the meeting with the ICESCO Secretary General on January 13, the President of the Republic of Azerbaijan once again exposed the purposeful policy pursued by Armenia for decades in the liberated territories of our country, aimed at destroying Azerbaijan's historical, material and cultural heritage.

Destroying, looting and changing the origin of historical, cultural and religious monuments in the territories occupied by Armenia for almost 30 years, aimed at destroying everything belonging to the Azerbaijani people and preventing the return of Azerbaijanis to their homes, is tantamount to war crimes.

Of course, Armenia is responsible for these crimes and must answer in international courts.

As for the ancient Armenian religious and secular monuments, such monuments of Armenians, who do not belong to the Caucasian ethnic groups and were massively relocated to the Caucasus in the XIX century, may exist somewhere.

I would not comment on this issue because it does not belong to our region."

As for the Armenian Foreign Ministry's unfounded accusations that Azerbaijan does not allow international organizations, especially UNESCO, we remind the Armenian Foreign Ministry that in recent decades it has been Armenia that prevented international missions to visit the occupied territories of Azerbaijan. This fact is even more clearly reflected in the 2005 report on UNESCO. Thus, the report states that the Azerbaijani government has expressed concern about the protection of cultural heritage in Nagorno-Karabakh and other occupied territories, and requested the sending of a fact-finding mission to these territories, but this mission was not possible due to the Armenian military occupation.

The Azerbaijani side brought its response on establishing the UNESCO mission to the attention of the other side. In general, no third party can interfere in the dialogue process between Azerbaijan and UNESCO.

We are confident that the UNESCO / ICESCO mission will be a good opportunity to bring to the attention of the international community the acts of vandalism committed by Armenia during the 30 years of occupation on objective grounds and with real facts. Azerbaijan is a multicultural country and all Muslim and Christian-Albanian monuments in Karabakh belong to the historical, cultural and religious heritage of the Azerbaijani people. All monuments in Azerbaijan are protected at the state level. The protection of the rich heritage of our country will continue to be provided at a high level, including the restoration, repair and reconstruction of monuments in the liberated territories."