Azernews.Az

BAKU – The Azerbaijani government was informed about the recent visit by a Washington Post reporter to the Armenia-occupied Nagorno Karabakh region and did not ban it, the country’s foreign ministry said after the newspaper carried an article on the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict that had pro-Armenian bias.

Elkhan Polukhov, the ministry’s spokesman, voiced hope that The Washington Post will "remain committed to its unbiased image" and ensure coverage of Baku’s position on the Nagorno Karabakh conflict as well.

"Azerbaijan is ready to cooperate with any media outlet of the world taking an objective stance while covering issues pertaining to the conflict or at least reflecting upon the positions of both sides," Polukhov said.

In his article, published in The Washington Post last Thursday, Will Englund, the newspaper’s Moscow correspondent, used the words "Artsakh" and "Stepanakert", which the Armenians use for Karabakh and Khankandi, the center of the self-proclaimed republic run by ethnic Armenians in the Azerbaijani region.

Azerbaijan’s foreign ministry has "blacklisted" several journalists over their illegal visits to the country’s Armenia-occupied territories, including Russian Izvestiya (News) newspaper’s reporter Yuri Snegirov and Sergei Buntman, Echo of Moscow radio station’s first assistant editor-in-chief.

Nagorno Karabakh has been occupied by Armenian armed 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.