Yerevan deliberately avoids participation in international event in Baku
By Abdul Kerimkhanov
Azerbaijan at the state level pays comprehensive attention and care for the national heritage and historical past.
By positioning itself as a safe and secure country, Azerbaijan proves in practice that it deserves this confidence. Holding in Azerbaijan such international events demonstrates a high level of confidence in the country.
Baku has a wealth of experience in matters of concern to the world community. The country has successfully implemented a policy to combat various negative trends and shares this experience with colleagues from other states and organizations.
However, the western neighbor of Azerbaijan is still confined to statements that do not carry any serious meaning or effect. Apparently, Armenia just demonstrates jealousy to Azerbaijani success in the hosting of world significant competitions and events.
The thing is, Azerbaijan and UNESCO signed an agreement on the country’s hosting the 43rd session of the UNESCO World Heritage Committee. The agreement read that Azerbaijan provides security guarantees to all participants of the session.
However, the Armenian side refused to take part in the conference by saying that allegedly Azerbaijan did not provide security guarantees to a number of participants in the session.
Answering to this strange statement, Leyla Abdullayeva, the spokesperson of Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry, said that the agreement reflected all organizational aspects, including the provision of security guarantees to all participants of the event without exception.
So, all UNESCO member states that intended to participate in the event visited Baku and are taking part in the session having the above guarantees, which Azerbaijan provided.
Speaking about Armenian attempts to demand some additional security guarantees exclusively for its members, Abdullayeva called this untruthful steps as own politically motivated choice to avoid participation in the international event held in Azerbaijan at a high level.
It seems that Armenian Foreign Ministry still does not know the technical rules and procedures for holding sessions of the World Heritage Committee.
"Armenian MFA should contact the UNESCO Secretariat to finally understand that equal and universal guarantees are provided to all participants of such events without any special reservations regarding individual countries," Abdullayeva concluded.
It is also noteworthy that Armenia is a country that goes against the main principles of UNESCO’s activity – preserving sites of world heritage around the world. Thousands of Azerbaijani architectural and natural monuments were destroyed by Armenians since the beginning of the Nagorno-Karabakh war.
Since the beginning of the conflict and occupation of Azerbaijani territories, the Armenian aggressors destroyed 1,200 historical and architectural monuments, looted 27 museums, while over 100,000 items were exported to Armenia.
Moreover, the Armenian occupiers destroyed 152 religious monuments and 62 mosques, as many as 4.6 million books in 927 libraries, including the Quran and rare Islamic manuscripts.
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Abdul Kerimkhanov is AzerNews’ staff journalist, follow him on Twitter: @AbdulKerim94
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