Azernews.Az

BAKU - 300 Armenian families have been settled in Azerbaijan’s Lachin region in the past six months as part of Yerevan’s policy of illegal settlements pursued in the occupied Azerbaijani territories.

The figure was cited by Ara Arutyunyan, the "prime minister" of the self-proclaimed Nagorno Karabakh republic, in a meeting with representatives of an Armenian diaspora group, Armenian media reported.

During the meeting, settling Armenian families from Armenia and other countries in the occupied territories was discussed.

Lachin serves as the strategic corridor connecting Nagorno-Karabakh with Armenia.

An OSCE fact-finding mission that visited the seven occupied Azerbaijani regions surrounding Nagorno Karabakh last year concluded that about 14,000 Armenians were illegally settled in the Azerbaijani territories.

Azerbaijan and Armenia have been locked in conflict for two decades. The two countries waged a war in the early 1990s, which claimed some 30,000 lives and displaced about a million Azerbaijanis. Armenian armed forces have occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan’s territory since then. A ceasefire accord was signed in 1994, but peace talks have been largely fruitless so far.