Azernews.Az

By Aynur Karimova

Azerbaijan's Economy and Industry Ministry will develop proposals aimed at restraining the operation of foreign companies in the occupied territories of the country.

This issue was discussed on July 23 meeting of the ministry devoted to achieving the goals announced at the recent Cabinet meeting chaired by President Ilham Aliyev.

The ministry once again announced that the operation of foreign companies in the occupied territories of Azerbaijan is unacceptable.

Azerbaijan’s foreign ministry and diplomatic missions pay special attention to illegal activities in the occupied areas of Azerbaijan. The work is consistently carried out to prevent illegal actions and visits.

Unauthorized visits to Nagorno-Karabakh and other regions of Azerbaijan that are occupied by Armenia are considered illegal, and individuals who partake in such visits are blacklisted by Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry.

The Azerbaijani government has created an information portal to prevent illegal visits to Azerbaijan’s occupied territory Nagorno-Karabakh.

The Foreign Ministry recently included two Russian citizens on its blacklist for illegal visits to the occupied territories, one of them being entrepreneur German Sterligov.

Sterligov left Russia and went to Nagorno-Karabakh, the businessman’s lawyer told BBC on July 6. Sterligov put up his livestock and vehicle fleet for sale before leaving.

Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry Spokesman Hikmet Hajiyev told Trend on July 10, that Sterligov has a controversial biography. Before entering the occupied territories, he should have been aware that the region is now a favorable location for criminal activity and money laundering through Armenia’s banking system.

Sterligov is notorious for his inflammatory statements on ethnicity and religion. Now residing in the occupied Azerbaijani town of Shusha, his statements about "human values" do not have any moral, ethical, and legal basis.

"The person speaking of ‘human values’ would have understood that more than one million Azerbaijani people have been expelled as a result of Armenia's bloody ethnic cleansing peculiar to the fascist ideology,” Hajiyev said.

Armenia occupied over 20 percent of Azerbaijan's internationally recognized territory, including Nagorno-Karabakh and seven adjacent regions, after laying territorial claims against its South Caucasus neighbor, causing a brutal war in the early 1990s. Long-standing efforts by U.S., Russian, and French mediators have been largely fruitless so far.

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Aynur Karimova is AzerNews’ staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Aynur_Karimova

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