Azerbaijan, Ukraine focus on problems of refugees, IDPs
By Sara Rajabova
Azerbaijani and Ukrainian officials have discussed the problems of refugees and IDPs, who have been expelled from their homes as a result of the Armenian-Azerbaijani Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.
Deputy Prime Minister of Azerbaijan, chairman of the State Committee for Refugee and IDP Affairs Ali Hasanov met Ukrainian Ambassador to Azerbaijan Alexander Mishchenko on October 20.
Hasanov expressed disappointment over the fact that the OSCE Minsk Group has made no progress in solving the conflict on the basis of the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan and in returning the refugees and IDPs to their lands.
He stressed the importance of stepping up the efforts of the OSCE Minsk Group in settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, which emerged in 1988 over Armenia's territorial claims against Azerbaijan.
Mishchenko, in turn, praised rapid economic development of Azerbaijan, as well as the country`s increasing influence in the world and progress achieved in improvement of social conditions of refugees and IDPs in the country.
He said Kyiv is willing to learn the Azerbaijani government's experience in solving IDPs problems to deal with the problem that emerged in the wake of the Ukraine developments.
Since a lengthy war in the early 1990s that displaced over one million Azerbaijanis, Armenian armed forces have occupied over 20 percent of Azerbaijan's internationally recognized territory, including Nagorno-Karabakh and seven adjacent regions.
Peace talks, mediated by Russia, France and the U.S. through the OSCE Minsk Group, are underway on the basis of a peace outline proposed by the Minsk Group co-chairs and dubbed the Madrid Principles. The negotiations have been largely fruitless so far.