Baku repudiates label "people of Nagorno-Karabakh"
By Mushvig Mehdiyev
Infuriated by the expression "people of Nagorno-Karabakh", when it comes to referring to population in Azerbaijan's occupied region of Karabakh, Baku has warned that they would not tolerate for the country' sovereignty to be challenged in such a callous choice of language.
"Using the expression "people of Nagorno-Karabakh" by the co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group and the U.S. State Department is wrong and unacceptable," Spokesman for the Foreign Ministry, Hikmet Hajiyev said.
Statements issued by the OSCE MG and the U.S. Department of State assessing the so-called "parliamentary elections" in the occupied Nagorno-Karabakh region referred to the population in the region as the "people of Nagorno-Karabakh", according to Azerbaijan's Foreign Ministry.
"There is no such concept as the "people of Nagorno-Karabakh" at all," Hajiyev noted.
He added that the population in the Nagorno-Karabakh region of Azerbaijan consists of Azerbaijani and Armenian communities. "This fact should be clearly expressed and defined," Hajiyev concluded.
Meanwhile, the Azerbaijani Community of Nagorno-Karabakh region of Azerbaijan raised its opposition to the fictional "parliamentary polls" held in Nagorno-Karabakh assessing it as the violation of Azerbaijan's Constitution and laws as well as the rules and principles of international law.
The "elections" ignore the rights of Azerbaijanis who historically lived in the area," read the statement issued by the community.
"Holding a legitimate election in Nagorno-Karabakh will be possible only after Armenian forces completely withdraw from Azerbaijan's territories and Azerbaijanis return back to their historical lands," the community statement further said.
On May 3, the separatist regime carried out illegitimate "parliamentary elections" in Azerbaijan's Nagorno-Karabakh region. Baku condemned the move severely, calling it a "provocation" undermining the peace talks attempting to solve the conflict.
Armenia's armed invasion into Azerbaijan's legal territory resulted in a severe conflict pushing the two neighboring countries into a bitter territorial dispute over the Nagorno-Karabakh region, which Armenia-backed separatists seized from Azerbaijan in a bloody war in the early 1990s.
Despite Baku's best efforts, peace in the occupied lands remains a mirage in the distance as Armenia refuses to comply with international law.
Baku proposed a Great Peace Agreement project to work jointly on the conflict's settlement. Yerevan refused of course to seize such peace opportunity, preferring instead to support the occupation.
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