Azernews.Az

By Vafa Ismayilova

Azerbaijani diaspora organizations in the Netherlands have staged a protest rally against the resolutions by the French Senate and Belgian Parliament on the recognition of the self-styled “Nagorno-Karabakh Republic”, Azertag has reported.

The rally was joined by the Chairman of the Benelux Azerbaijanis Congress (BAC) in the Netherlands and Belgium Elsever Mammadov, head of the Netherlands-Azerbaijan-Turkey Cultural Centre Ilhan Askin, as well as the coordinators of BAC and Azerbaijanis' Coordinating Council in the Netherlands Maisa Aghamirzayeva and Lamiya Babayeva, the report added.

The rally participants called on France and Belgium to uphold justice and reject the resolutions. Diaspora activist Shamil Mustafayev said that he had handed over a protest letter to the Embassy of France. Slogans such as “France, stop supporting Armenian terrorism”, “Karabakh is Azerbaijan” were chanted during the event.

On December 4, the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry stated that the adoption of the resolutions as "another completely unjustified, unfriendly and provocative activity of the French Parliament. The adoption of a biased resolution by the lower house after the Senate is a sign of the ongoing campaign against Azerbaijan". On 26 November and on 4 December, Azerbaijan sent protest notes to France over the above-mentioned resolutions.

On November 10, Azerbaijan and Armenia signed a Russia-brokered agreement to end fighting in Karabakh and work towards a comprehensive solution.

The November peace agreement ended the 30-years-old conflict between Baku and Yerevan over Azerbaijan’s Nagorno-Karabakh region that along with the seven adjacent regions came under the occupation of Armenian armed forces in the war in the 1990s. For nearly three decades, Armenia failed to implement the UN Security Council resolutions (822, 853, 874 and 884) demanding the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of its troops, which was the main obstacle to the resolution of the conflict.

The OSCE Minsk Group co-chaired by the United States, Russia and France had been mediating the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict since the signing of the volatile cease-fire agreement in 1994. The Minsk Group’s efforts resulted in no progress as Armenia refused to abide by the UN Security Council resolutions.

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