Azernews.Az

BAKU – The Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC) has expressed disappointment over a recent visit by several Cypriot NGO representatives to Khankandi, the center of the self-proclaimed republic run by ethnic Armenians in the Nagorno Karabakh region of Azerbaijan.

"Further to the meeting organized last month in Baku by Western NGOs and financed by Western countries, another meeting took place in Armenia," the TRNC’s Baku office said in a statement. "As far as we understand, participants, under the pretext of ‘a contribution to peace", were taken to Khankandi from Armenia. We do not welcome this visit and are upset that some NGO representatives who do not hold official positions were involved in it."

The statement said that the Cypriot government has always supported Azerbaijan’s position on its conflict with Armenia over Nagorno Karabakh. "This will continue to be the case, and the contrary is out of the question," it said.

Armenian media reported that the NGO representatives from TRNC had attended a roundtable held in Khankandi on April 1-3 with the support of Britain’s International Alert organization. The workshop studied Cyprus as an example of an armed conflict followed by peace-keeping efforts and a peaceful co-existence of residents.

Azerbaijan’s Foreign Ministry has appealed to the Turkish side over the unauthorized visit paid to Nagorno Karabakh. The ministry’s spokesman, Elkhan Polukhov, said that if the reports concerning it are confirmed, those persons would be "blacklisted" and barred from coming to Azerbaijan.

Nagorno Karabakh is an Azerbaijani region occupied by Armenian forces since a 1994 cease-fire ended a war that killed an estimated 30,000 people and ousted up to one million Azerbaijanis from their homes. Years of OSCE-brokered peace talks have brought few tangible results.