Azerbaijan accuses Armenia of provocation ahead of ministerial meeting on Karabakh settlement

Azerbaijan accuses Armenia of provocation ahead of ministerial meeting on Karabakh settlement
# 31 August 2017 14:07 (UTC +04:00)

Armenian Foreign Ministry’s statement about the alleged ceasefire violation on Aug. 31 during the OSCE monitoring in Azerbaijan’s Tovuz district on the border between the two countries is disinformation, Himat Hajiyev, spokesman for the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry, told APA.

“This is cheap disinformation by the Armenian Foreign Ministry. No ceasefire violations were reported by international observers who participated in the monitoring,” said Hajiyev.

This is another provocation of Armenia ahead of the meeting of the two countries’ foreign ministers, which will be held through the mediation of the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs within the framework of the UN General Assembly session in New York in September, stressed Hajiyev.

“Armenia, through such actions, aims to deliberately create escalation and adversely affect the negotiation process on the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict,” he added.

The Nagorno-Karabakh conflict entered its modern phase when the Armenian SRR made territorial claims against the Azerbaijani SSR in 1988.

A fierce war broke out between Azerbaijan and Armenia over the Nagorno-Karabakh region of Azerbaijan. As a result of the war, Armenian armed forces occupied some 20 percent of Azerbaijani territory which includes Nagorno-Karabakh and seven adjacent districts (Lachin, Kalbajar, Aghdam, Fuzuli, Jabrayil, Gubadli and Zangilan), and over a million Azerbaijanis became refugees and internally displaced people.

The military operations finally came to an end when Azerbaijan and Armenia signed a ceasefire agreement in Bishkek in 1994.

Dealing with the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict is the OSCE Minsk Group, which was created after the meeting of the CSCE (OSCE after the Budapest summit held in December 1994) Ministerial Council in Helsinki on 24 March 1992. The Group’s members include Azerbaijan, Armenia, Russia, the United States, France, Italy, Germany, Turkey, Belarus, Finland and Sweden.

Besides, the OSCE Minsk Group has a co-chairmanship institution, comprised of Russian, the US and French co-chairs, which began operating in 1996.

Resolutions 822, 853, 874 and 884 of the UN Security Council, which were passed in short intervals in 1993, and other resolutions adopted by the UN General Assembly, PACE, OSCE, OIC, and other organizations require Armenia to unconditionally withdraw its troops from Nagorno-Karabakh.

Nagorno Garabagh

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