Azernews.Az

The United Nations has affirmed that the Nagorno Karabakh region is part of Azerbaijan and is occupied by Armenian troops, according to the UN News Center.

The report was released following Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov’s speech at the UN General Assembly on Tuesday and an Armenian representative’s response.

"Top officials from Azerbaijan and Armenia have expressed views on their long-running dispute over the Nagorno Karabakh region, which is part of Azerbaijan but occupied by Armenian forces, during the General Assembly’s annual general debate," the UN center said.

Mammadyarov told the UN that resolution of the conflict must start with a withdrawal of Armenian armed forces from the Azerbaijani territory occupied since the 1990s war.

Mammadyarov said Armenia had flagrantly violated the UN Charter and other documents of international law and perpetrated aggression against his country.

"As a result of this aggression, almost 20 per cent of the territory of Azerbaijan continues to remain under occupation and about one million Azerbaijani refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs) are unable to return to their homes," he said.

Mammadyarov said Armenia’s leadership "continues to publicly incite the future generations to new wars, violence and aggression and propagate by all means the dangerous ideas of animosity and hatred towards not only Azerbaijan, but also other peoples of the region."

Exercising his right of reply, a representative of Armenia said the comments of Azerbaijan were Cold War-style propaganda that did nothing to bring about a resolution of the dispute.

He said Mammadyarov had misinterpreted the UN Charter and several Security Council resolutions, and was creating artificial delays to any settlement.

In response, a representative of Azerbaijan said Armenia had been "carrying out ethnic cleansing on a massive scale" in Nagorno Karabakh, and would be eventually forced to "cease its provocative policies."

In his speech, Mammadyarov also said Armenian troops are to be pulled out "within the fixed time-table", and the withdrawal is to be followed by the restoration of communications and return of Azerbaijani refugees and internally displaced persons to their homes. Further, suitable conditions should be created for a peaceful co-existence of Azerbaijanis and Armenians in the Nagorno Karabakh region within Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity, he said. According to him, this step-by-step approach, which has been proposed by the OSCE mediators and supported by the entire international community, except, the leadership of Armenia, can bring durable peace and stability to the region.

In 1993, the UN Security Council adopted four resolutions urging an immediate, complete and unconditional withdrawal of Armenian forces from all occupied Azerbaijani territories and reaffirmed Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity and inviolability of its internationally recognized borders. The same appeals were made by other international organizations. However, Armenia has been failing to fulfill the resolutions and ignoring international calls.