Azernews.Az

BAKU – Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev has expressed discontent with the non-enforcement of the UN resolutions on the Nagorno Karabakh conflict for many years.

"The UN Security Council has passed four resolutions on a pullout of the invading Armenian troops from Azerbaijani territories, but none of them have been implemented so far," President Aliyev told Russia’s Rossiya 24 TV channel.

"We have seen that the UN SC’s resolution on Libya was enforced just a few hours after being adopted. But the resolutions on Nagorno Karabakh have not been implemented for 17 to 18 years. Naturally, this raises questions.

"What’s the reason for this? There was such prompt action [against Libya], but on the other hand such inertness is being seen on the issue concerning us," Aliyev said.

Since the war in the early 1990s, Armenian troops have occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan’s territory, including the Nagorno Karabakh region and its seven surrounding regions, despite the four UN resolutions on their unconditional pullout and condemnation by a number of other international organizations. Peace talks, brokered by the United States, Russia and France through the OSCE Minsk Group, have been largely fruitless so far.

The Azerbaijani leader praised Russia’s role in settling the Nagorno Karabakh conflict.

"President Dmitry Medvedev is making a tremendous effort to assist in resolving this conflict. Several trilateral [presidential] meetings have been held on his initiative. These meetings are of great importance and have a positive result."

Aliyev expressed disappointment that the Karabakh conflict has been unresolved for many years.

"Though many years have passed and essentially all international organizations have passed resolutions on resolving the problem, it has not yet found its solution," Aliyev said, but added that Baku hopes to achieve progress in the near future.