Azernews.Az

BAKU – Azerbaijan has prevented the inclusion of its Alban-era crosses on historical monuments in a UNESCO cultural heritage list as Armenian art samples, officials said.

Minister of Culture and Tourism Abulfas Garayev told reporters upon return from Kenya that a UNESCO panel meeting there had held discussions, which, upon Armenia’s proposals, covered the inclusion of "hachkars" and gravestone crosses in the UNESCO’s Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.

"Such historical monuments and crosses on various buildings are samples of creative work of the Albanian people," Garayev said. "We were concerned that these samples could be included in the list as purely Armenian ones. But UNESCO’s general secretariat and members of the commission treated the matter with special subtleness, considering protests of Baku’s scientific community, educational institutions, the Azerbaijani diaspora, and government agencies. As a result of substantial exchange of views over two days, only relevant samples located in Armenia were entered as Armenian creative art in the list."

The minister said the inclusion of Albanian stones in the list was ruled out, which means that "no one will be able to level any claims" on these samples any longer.

Garayev said Armenia did not counter the move. "The Armenian side realized that politics cannot be dealt with by the commission. It therefore agreed to remove the clauses that could touch upon Nagorno Karabakh [the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict over Nagorno Karabakh], the Albanian church and other issues concerning Azerbaijan. Further, the commission approved the proposal."

Russia, which invaded Azerbaijan in the early 19th century, moved Armenians to Azerbaijani territory from Iran and Turkey. In 1836, the Russian Czar abolished the Albanian Church, which had a history of one and a half millennia, and handed it over to the Armenian Apostle Church, and Armenians began to demolish or appropriate Albanian monuments and churches. In the 1850s, the archives of the Albanian Church were burnt.