Azernews.Az

Armenia has already accepted a settlement of the Upper (Nagorno) Garabagh conflict within Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity, the head of the Azerbaijan Presidential Administration Ramiz Mehdiyev has said.
Addressing the opening of the first Azerbaijani-Russian forum on humanitarian cooperation on Friday, Mehdiyev noted that the country’s integrity is recognized by the entire world community. The document signed at the OSCE Ministerial Council in Athens in late 2009 points to the importance of settling the conflict according to this principle, he said.
"For the first time since the dispute erupted, Armenia co-signed the paper, expressing its content for a conflict settlement complying with Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity," Mehdiyev said.
Further, he stressed that this integrity, which is widely recognized, must be restored. "The complicated period of counter-opposing the principles of territorial integrity and nations’ right to self-determination has passed."
Mehdiyev also cited the importance of a more unbiased coverage of Garabagh settlement in the Russian media. "Journalists making biased reports are forgetting the works of Alexander Griboyedov, Russia’s former ambassador to Iran [who held the post in the early 19th century], about mass re-settlements of Armenians from Iran to the Caucasus."
The head of the presidential administration said that at times, Russian media releases meaningless statements claiming that Upper Garabagh was "presented" to Azerbaijan by Stalin, though present-day Armenia was, in fact, created on account of Azerbaijani territory. Mehdiyev recalled that during the first years of the Soviet rule, lands populated by 300,000 Azerbaijanis were granted to Armenia and territories settled by 500,000 Azerbaijanis were granted to Georgia, another South Caucasus republic.
Azerbaijan and Armenia fought a lengthy war that ended with the signing of a cease-fire in 1994, but Armenia continues to occupy Upper Garabagh and seven other Azerbaijani districts in defiance of international law. The OSCE-brokered peace talks have been fruitless so far.
Mehdiyev said that excluding the residents of Upper Garabagh, about 20,000 Armenians presently live in Azerbaijan. In Armenia, however, comprehensive ethnic cleansing has been carried out, and not a single Azerbaijani resides there now, though there were previously 300,000 Azerbaijanis in the country, according to a 1979 census.
Mehdiyev added that people of other nationalities have had to flee Armenia as well.*