Azernews.Az

The leaders of religious confessions of Azerbaijan have issued a joint statement on the provocation of Armenia on the Lachin road, Azernews reports with reference to the Department of Muslims of the Caucasus.

According to the statement, recently there have been biased statements about another provocative spectacle with trucks, artificially created by Armenia in recent days on the Lachin-Khankandi road, the sovereign territory of Azerbaijan, recognized by the international community.

"For many years, we have witnessed how a number of European states, especially France, which incites genocide, violence, and conflicts in Africa and Oceania, as well as some Western organizations under the influence of the Armenian lobby, make biased, anti-Azerbaijani decisions and resolutions. Undoubtedly, the goal of the official Yerevan, Karabakh separatists, and their supporters is to disrupt the signing of the peace agreement, drag out the Azerbaijani-Armenian negotiations and carry out purposeful revanchism.

In these processes, the activity of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in the region causes special concern. Some time ago, the official Baku brought the facts that testify that the ICRC is engaged in smuggling on the Lachin road, and exposed the direct participation of the organization in the crossing of the border by Armenian war criminals and terrorists," the statement said.

"Despite the fact that the topic under discussion is not religious in nature, our task as every person who wants to establish peace in the Caucasus region and as religious figures who make great efforts on this path is to approach what is happening according to the criteria of law and justice," the religious leaders said.

The dispatch of trucks to the Lachin border gate under the cover of "humanitarian aid" from Armenia is part of an anti-Azerbaijani provocative campaign aimed at gaining world attention. Azerbaijani official bodies have frequently asked Armenian inhabitants living in Azerbaijan's Karabakh territory to discuss, but Armenia has refused, rejecting Azerbaijan's humanistic suggestions.

The fact that trucks purposefully cause problems in the direction of the Lachin border checkpoint, as well as Armenia's description of the incident as a "policy of ethnic cleansing" and a "humanitarian crisis," demonstrates the Armenian side's ability to systematically distort the facts.

The information disseminated by Armenia about the "policy of ethnic cleansing" is false and slanderous. The international community should not forget that for almost 30 years, as a result of the policy of ethnic cleansing carried out by Armenian extremists, more than a million Azerbaijanis were forced to leave their native lands, becoming refugees and internally displaced persons.

It was during the aggression of Armenia against Azerbaijan that mosques, temples, cemeteries, and historical monuments were destroyed and looted in the occupied territories; Christian and Russian Orthodox churches belonging to Caucasian Albania were Gregorianized; and animals considered forbidden in Islam were kept in mosques.

Despite the end of the war, hundreds of Azerbaijani citizens are still dying and becoming disabled as a result of the explosions of mines that were delivered by Armenia directly along the Lachin road to the territory of Azerbaijan.

The Azerbaijani people, under the leadership of the President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev, restored their territorial integrity and saved their ancestral lands, officially recognized by the UN and international law, from the aggression of Armenia.

Today, paying attention to the restoration and reconstruction of religious and spiritual monuments along with civilian objects in the liberated territories at the state level once again confirms the tolerance of Azerbaijan, which is one of the leading centers in the process of intercultural and interreligious dialogue.

"President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev, known for his global thinking and humanistic ideas, as the leader who determined the fate of the region and rewrote its history, calls on the Armenian side for solidarity based on political thinking and humanistic logic, for peace and coexistence for the sake of the future of peoples," the statement said.

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