“During 30 years, we asked UNESCO to come to the territories under occupation and become witnesses. They always rejected,” President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev said during the meeting with representatives of foreign think tanks, who took part in the 'South Caucasus Development and Cooperation' international conference in Shusha, APA reports.
“Just a year and a half before the Second Karabakh war, our then Foreign Minister was in UNESCO to ask for it and the answer was that UNESCO does not attend political issues. Once the war ended, the situation changed. Whey, because there was such a concept that Armenian historical heritage may be damaged. However, the fact on razing to ground 65 mosques out of 67 by Armenians, is completely neglected. As if these are not religious, historic heritage. We face this situation. Now after tens of thousands of international representatives visited Shusha and saw that the Armenian church was not touched there, on the contrary after seeing that they will be restored, unlike the mosques destroyed by the Armenians, UNESCO’s interest in visiting the region is decreasing. Because when they come or if they come, what will they prepare a report on? They should provide information on the destroyed 65 mosques. They should report that Armenians kept pigs and cows in the Agdam mosque. They will have to report Armenian, Christian, and Albanian religious heritage was not touched. You can see Armenian Church at the center in Baku and we are keeping 5 thousand books in the Armenian language there. And what do we see in Yerevan? They renamed the Azerbaijani mosque and call it the Persian mosque. They also called the mosque in Shusha a Persian mosque.
They even invited specialists from Iran to conduct some restoration works for changing its origin. A diplomatic note was issued in this regard and the Iranian ambassador was summoned to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. We demanded to put an end to it. Because it was part of the legitimization of the destruction of the Muslim heritage. That was the difference. The religious and historical heritage of Azerbaijan belongs to all the people of Azerbaijan,” said President.
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