Azernews.Az

BAKU - The Azerbaijani government has said it does not expect the UN top court's ruling supporting Kosovo's independence declaration to affect the ongoing talks to settle the Armenia-Azerbaijan Upper (Nagorno) Karabakh conflict.

The International Court of Justice in The Hague backed Kosovo's independence, claiming it complied with international law.

Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry spokesman Elkhan Polukhov said that "if conflicts differ, approaches to them should be different too".

"We believe that the decision handed down by the international court refers exclusively to the Kosovo issue.

Conflicts existing in the world differ with their peculiarity and there is no single respective solution to them.

We do not see any impact of the decision on the Nagorno Karabakh conflict and a settlement to the conflict continues to be sought in its own format."

Landlocked Kosovo with its two million inhabitants -- 90 percent of them ethnic Albanians of mainly Muslim belief -- unilaterally declared independence from Serbia in February 2008 after UN-brokered negotiations to resolve its future status failed.

Sixty-nine nations have recognized Kosovo including all but five of the 27 EU member states.

The Karabakh conflict emerged during the last few years of the Soviet Union. 20 percent of Azerbaijan’s territory, including Nagorno Karabakh and seven adjacent districts, has been under Armenian occupation since the two South Caucasus republics signed a precarious 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.*