Azernews.Az

BAKU – The Azerbaijani government is "disappointed" with the lack of international condemnation of the Armenian leader’s latest statement instigating occupation of Turkey’s territory, Foreign Ministry spokesman Elkhan Polukhov has said.

President Serzh Sargsyan said while addressing school students on Monday that Armenia’s reclaiming its western territories, including the Agri mountainous area in Turkey, was allegedly a task facing future generations of Armenians. Sargsyan also claimed that his generation "successfully fulfilled its duty" by "freeing Artsakh [Azerbaijan’s occupied Nagorno Karabakh region] from the enemy".

Agri is the tallest mountain in Turkey located in the eastern part of the country.

"The Armenian leadership is no longer covering up its filthy, illegitimate actions and intentions even with diplomatic rhetoric and has thus revealed its true immoral face," the Azerbaijani ministry’s spokesman Polukhov said.

He said that unfortunately, the fact that the world community is turning a blind eye to such statements made by the leader of a country invading another’s territory is grounds to assume that Sargsyan will go unpunished.

"Today’s open calls by the leader of Armenia, who is holding talks on ending the occupation of Azerbaijani lands, and at the same time is instigating his country’s youth to a new aggression…both negate the efforts by [the mediating OSCE Minsk Group’s] co-chairing countries on settling the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict over Nagorno Karabakh and amount to disrespect for the norms and principles of international law," Polukhov said.

The ministry spokesman said that if the world community is failing to respond to such disrespect for "the core principles of mankind", this questions to what extent its peace efforts "will have an influence upon Sargsyan".

Polukhov noted that just days after Sargsyan’s statement, a 24-year-old Azerbaijani woman was wounded by an Armenian sniper on the frontline, and this was done upon the Armenian leader’s "blessing" to commit violence against women and underage children.

Azerbaijan and Armenia fought a lengthy war that ended with the signing of a fragile cease-fire in 1994. About 20 percent of Azerbaijani territory, including Nagorno Karabakh and seven adjacent regions, has been under the occupation of Armenian armed forces since the war. Peace talks, brokered by the US, Russian and French co-chairs of the Minsk Group, have been largely fruitless so far.