Azernews.Az

Armenia has refused to attend a meeting of the Council of Europe parliamentary assembly’s subcommittee on the Nagorno Karabakh conflict, head of the Azerbaijani delegation to PACE has said.

Samad Seyidov, who attended the meeting, along with the subcommittee chairman, Spanish lawmaker Jordi Xucla i Costa and Sabir Hajiyev, another member of the Azerbaijani delegation, told reporters that it was decided to inform a PACE bureau about Armenia’s move.

"Everyone witnessed that Armenia is violating the unanimous decision passed by the PACE bureau and is not participating at the meeting," Seyidov said.

The Armenian delegation did not join the subcommittee’s meetings in the spring and summer either.

The subcommittee was established in 2005 to oversee the implementation of the assembly’s resolution calling for a pullout of Armenian troops from the occupied Azerbaijani territories. However, the body’s activity was suspended due to the death of its chairman Lord Russell Johnston in the summer of 2008. After Mevlut Cavusoglu of Turkey was elected PACE President in January 2010, the subcommittee resumed its work.

The Karabakh conflict emerged during the last few years of the Soviet Union. 20 percent of Azerbaijan’s territory, including Nagorno Karabakh, has been under Armenian occupation since the two South Caucasus republics signed a precarious cease-fire in 1994 following a lengthy war. Over a decade of efforts by US, Russian and French mediators have been largely fruitless so far.