Azernews.Az

By Rashid Shirinov

Armenia will not be able to avoid responsibility for the occupation until it withdraws its troops from Azerbaijani lands in accordance with the requirements of UN Security Council resolutions, said Spokesman for the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry Hikmat Hajiyev.

He was commenting on the recent speech of Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan in the parliament.

“The only purpose of Pashinyan’s statement on inviting the illegal regime established in the occupied territories of Azerbaijan to the negotiating table is to destroy the negotiation process. Armenia is the party responsible for the continuation of the military occupation of Azerbaijani territories through the use of force,” Hajiyev told Trend on September, noting that the international legal responsibility for the occupation rests with Armenia as a party to the conflict.

He further said it is absolutely groundless that Pashinyan addressed the Armenian population of the occupied Nagorno-Karabakh region of Azerbaijan as “the people of Nagorno-Karabakh.”

“In all the documents submitted by the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs, which are now the subject of discussions, the Armenian and Azerbaijani communities of the former Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous region of Azerbaijan are defined as its population,” Hajiyev mentioned.

He stressed that instead of making contradictory statements, the prime minister of Armenia should read the documents and thus increase his political literacy in connection with the resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

“By speaking with such provocative and contradictory statements, the prime minister of Armenia assumes the main responsibility for the escalation of tension and undermining the negotiation process,” Hajiyev noted.

Armenia broke out a lengthy war against Azerbaijan by laying territorial claims on the country. Since a war in the early 1990s, Armenian armed forces have occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan's territory, including Nagorno-Karabakh and seven surrounding regions. More than 20,000 Azerbaijanis were killed and over 1 million were displaced as a result of the large-scale hostilities.

To this day, Armenia has not implemented four UN Security Council resolutions on withdrawal of its armed forces from the Nagorno-Karabakh and surrounding regions.

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Rashid Shirinov is AzerNews’ staff journalist, follow him on Twitter: @RashidShirinov

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