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Hostages’ freedom among Azerbaijan’s main priorities

6 November 2014 12:22 (UTC+04:00)
Hostages’ freedom among Azerbaijan’s main priorities

By Sara Rajabova

Azerbaijan's foreign policy head called illegal the trial over two Azerbaijani hostages on the occupied territories.

Elmar Mammadyarov made the remark at a press conference on November 5 following his meeting with Minister of State for Europe of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland David Lidington.

"The issue of the liberation of Azerbaijanis taken hostage in Kalbajar region remains among the main priorities of Azerbaijan, and we are doing everything possible to release them," Mammadyarov said.

The minister also added, the issue was raised at a meeting with the OSCE Minsk Group in Paris and the mediators promised to address it. He noted that resolving the issue takes time.

Armenian special forces killed Azerbaijani citizen Hasan Hasanov and took hostage Shahbaz Guliyev and Dilgam Asgarov in the Shaplar village of the occupied Kelbajar region on July 11. The civilians were visiting the graves of their relatives.

The Armenians have put on trial on October 27 the two Azerbaijanis, who were captured in their native lands by the Armenian separatists. The trial was held while Azerbaijani and Armenian presidents were meeting in Paris to discuss the ways of resolving Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

Mammadyarov further said Armenia, which has violated the rights of more than one million Azerbaijanis, has no right to talk about human rights.

"Lidington today met with refugees and internally displaced persons, uprooted from their native lands as a result of the Armenian aggression, and saw their serious conditions with his own eyes," Mammadyarov said.

Lidington, for his part, said the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict is a threat to the whole region.

"UK is considering the ways out of the situation and thinks over how it can contribute to the conflict's solution. We can neither dictate nor order the parties how to resolve the problem, but we can contribute to the conflict settlement with various proposals and initiatives," Lidington said.

The Nagorno-Karabakh conflict emerged in 1988 when Armenia made territorial claims against Azerbaijan. 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.

The UN Security Council's four resolutions on Armenian withdrawal have not been enforced to this day.

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.

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