Azernews.Az

BAKU – The European Commission has published a full text of its President Jose Manuel Barroso’s media statement made during a visit to Baku last month, after a terse response from the Azerbaijani government over a removal of some parts of his speech.

Barroso paid his first visit to Azerbaijan in the capacity of European Commission President on January 13. Following talks with President Ilham Aliyev, Barroso said concerning the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict over Nagorno Karabakh that the EU "of course supports the principle of territorial integrity of its partners including Azerbaijan". But these parts of his speech were subsequently removed from the EC’s website and replaced with other remarks. Azerbaijan’s Foreign Ministry said such an instance was disappointing and could question the country’s relations with the EU.

Azerbaijan and Armenia have been locked in conflict for two decades. Armenian armed forces have occupied over 20 percent of Azerbaijan's internationally recognized territory since a war in the early 1990s. The ceasefire accord has been in place since 1994, but years of OSCE-brokered peace talks have been largely fruitless.