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FM Mammadyarov: To change status quo, occupation of Azerbaijani lands must end

07 November 2017 13:18 (UTC +04:00)

Azerbaijan’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Elmar Mammadyarov met with Deputy Prime Minister of Sweden Mats Andersson as part of his official visit to the country.

During the meeting Mammadyarov touched upon the negotiation process on the resolution of Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and drew the attention to the fact that to change the status quo that heads of states of co-chair countries of OSCE Minsk Group declared as unacceptable and unsustainable, the fact of occupation must end and the armed forces of Armenia must withdraw from the occupied territories of Azerbaijan on the basis of the relevant UN Security Council resolutions, the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry told APA.

Mammadyarov also told about violation of human rights of refugees and IDPs of Azerbaijan who were forcefully subjected to ethnic cleansing by Armenia from the places of their origin.

He brought into the attention of Vice-Prime Minister the decision of Council of Europe Court of Human Rights "Chiragov and others v. Armenia" which Armenia refuses to accept and implement.

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.