Azernews.Az

PARIS – A conference aiming to convey the Azerbaijani community’s stance on the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict over Nagorno Karabakh to French scholars and politicians was held at a leading French think-tank on Monday, the Azerbaijani embassy in France told AssA-Irada.

The conference, organized at the French Institute of International Relations (IFRI) in Paris, was held over the 19th anniversary of occupation of the ancient Azerbaijani town of Shusha by Armenian armed forces.

Azerbaijani Ambassador in Paris Elchin Amirbayov said in his remarks that resolving the long-standing dispute is impossible without taking into account the views of Nagorno Karabakh’s 65,000 people-strong Azerbaijani community and without a safe return of the IDPs to the homes they were ousted from during the war in the early 1990s.

Amirbayov also said IFRI’s granting a forum to the Azerbaijani community of Nagorno Karabakh, along with the Armenians, "deals a major blow" upon the Armenian government and lobby’s efforts to mislead the world community by distorting the history and gist of the Karabakh problem.

The conflict between the two South Caucasus republics flared up in the late 1980s due to Armenia's territorial claims. Armenian armed forces have occupied over 20 percent of Azerbaijan's territory, including Nagorno Karabakh, since the two countries signed a precarious cease-fire in 1994 following the war. Baku says the occupied districts must be freed and Azerbaijani refugees returned home, and only after that could the status of Nagorno Karabakh be determined within Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity, while Armenia insists that self-determination is the core principle for a settlement of the dispute. International mediators are seeking a solution leaning simultaneously on both principles.