Azernews.Az

An Azerbaijani lawmaker has called on the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly to develop a specific mechanism for settling the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict over Upper (Nagorno) Garabagh. Azay Guliyev’s statement was made at a political affairs committee meeting during the OSCE PA winter session in Vienna as legislators were discussing the agenda of the 2010 annual assembly meeting due in Norway.
Guliyev said that though talks on Garabagh settlement have been ongoing for a decade and a half, a solution to the long-standing conflict has not yet been found due to Armenia’s non-constructive position. International organizations, including the OSCE, have stated their support for a peaceful resolution, and Azerbaijan is making an effort to reach a negotiated settlement. However, Yerevan has been failing to comply with the four UN resolutions and relevant documents passed by the OSCE and the Council of Europe, and to vacate Azerbaijani territories.
"Therefore, it is now time to draft concrete mechanisms regarding the documents adopted by the UN Security Council and the OSCE and to adopt them at the annual PA meeting to be held in Oslo. It is also possible to vest this task in Goran Lennmarker, the OSCE PA special representative and co-rapporteur on the Upper Garabagh conflict. Azerbaijan cannot put up with another fifteen years of fruitless negotiations, and the OSCE PA should put forth a specific stance to that end."
Aram Safaryan, the head of the Armenian delegation at the assembly, in his response, tried to draw the lawmakers’ attention to the situation with democracy in Azerbaijan and the so-called "elections" to be held in the self-proclaimed Upper Garabagh republic in May.
Guliyev, who took the floor again, said that since the Armenian delegate could not utter anything based on facts, he was trying to divert the MPs’ attention from the fact of occupation and to confuse them.
"If we talk about democracy, primarily, we could cite the democracy situation in Armenia proper and the actions of the Armenian authorities who are not refraining even from killing their own civilians. We are ready to discuss that topic. But for the time being, we are talking not about democracy but, specifically, about Armenia’s policy of occupation and its blatantly violating the norms of international law.
"As for the elections in unrecognized Upper Garabagh, everyone knows that it’s a farce and such steps are ridiculed in the whole world."
The Azerbaijani lawmaker added that the world community does not and will never yield to such provocative games.
The Garabagh conflict emerged during the last few years of the Soviet Union. Though the separatist regime in Upper Garabagh declared so-called independence at the time of the Soviet collapse in 1991, this "independence" has not been recognized by the world community. 20 percent of Azerbaijan’s territory, including Upper Garabagh and seven adjacent districts, has been under Armenian occupation since the two South Caucasus republics signed a cease-fire in 1994 following a lengthy war. The OSCE has been brokering peace talks for nearly two decades through a team of mediators representing the United States, Russia and France. However, negotiations have brought few tangible results so far.*