Baku condemns Yerevan’s support for aggressive separatism in Karabakh
By Vugar Khalilov
Baku has strongly condemned Yerevan's ongoing support to aggressive Armenian separatism in Azerbaijan's Karabakh region against the background of efforts being made to mend Azerbaijani-Armenian ties after the 44-day war in 2020.
In a statement posted on its website on February 21, the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry said: “We strongly condemn the statement of the Armenian Foreign Ministry in support of the illegal decision of February 20, 1988, which laid the foundation for the aggressive separatism of the radical Armenians of the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Region (NKAO) of the Azerbaijan SSR.”
The ministry reminded that the so-called decision contradicted the USSR Constitution, the Law on Nagorno-Karabakh of 1981, as well as all other relevant normative legal acts.
It stressed that Armenia's support for aggressive Armenian separatists and its aggressive policy based on territorial claims against Azerbaijan led to the occupation of part of Azerbaijan's territory for nearly 30 years, bloody ethnic cleansing and violation of the fundamental rights of one million Azerbaijanis.
“Aggressive separatism, described by the Armenian Foreign Ministry as a "revival", has led to a decades-long catastrophe in the region. This situation has seriously hampered the development of the region in peace and security for many years,” the statement emphasized.
At a time when international law is being established in the region and efforts are being made to normalize relations between the two countries, the Armenian Foreign Ministry's statement, which encourages interethnic strife, shows, on the one hand, the irresponsible behavior of this country, and on the other hand, the fact that Armenia has not drawn a lesson from the recent events, it noted.
“We bring to the attention of the Armenian Foreign Ministry that such a destructive approach has no future,” the ministry stressed.
The trilateral ceasefire deal signed by the Azerbaijani, Russian and Armenian leaders on November 10, 2020, ended the three-decade conflict over Azerbaijan’s Karabakh region which along with the seven adjacent regions came under the occupation of Armenian armed forces in the war in the early 1990s.
On January 11, 2021, the Azerbaijani, Russian and Armenian leaders signed the second statement since the end of the 44-day war. The newly-signed statement was set to implement clause 9 of the November 2020 statement related to the unblocking of all economic and transport communications in the region.
On November 26, 2021, the Azerbaijani, Russian and Armenian leaders signed a statement and agreed on a number of issues, including the demarcation and delimitation of the Azerbaijani-Armenian border by late 2021, some points related to humanitarian issues and the issue of unblocking of transport corridors which applies to the railway and to automobile communications.
On December 14, 2021, during the Brussels meeting, organized between Azerbaijani and Armenian leaders at the initiative of European Council President Charles Michel, the sides reaffirmed their commitment to the conditions agreed in the Sochi meeting.
Both sides agreed to establish a temporary working group on the delimitation of the Armenian-Azerbaijani border.
The issue of demining the liberated territories of Azerbaijan was also brought up on the agenda, and the European Union's readiness to provide technical assistance to Azerbaijan in this regard was underlined at the meeting.
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