Azernews.Az

A project on building a new city with a population of 100,000 people in Nagorno Karabakh, an Azerbaijani region under Armenian occupation, was presented in Yerevan last Friday, Armenian media reported. The city, titled Bagaran, is reportedly to be built in Azerbaijan’s Zangilan region.

Henry Sardaryan, chairman of the Association of Armenian Youth in Moscow, said that Armenia lacks economic power to build a city for 100,000 residents. If the country had it, he added, it would rehabilitate its own economy and address social issues facing its citizens.

"Due to complications for the Armenian economy during the post-independence years, the people are ready to leave their homes and go abroad to make a living," Sardaryan commented. "If it goes on like this, soon we will see a half-empty outpost [Armenia] with a population of less than a million people."

Ismayil Agakishiyev, head of the Center for Caucasus Studies at the Russian State Humanitarian University, says that given the current economic and demographic situation in Armenia and Nagorno Karabakh, the reports about presentations of urban construction projects in the occupied Azerbaijani territories "look not serious, to say the least".

"In the past 20 years, not so many facilities have been built in the Azerbaijani lands on account of the Armenian diaspora’s funds -- these include a road through Lachin [a corridor that links Nagorno Karabakh with Armenia’s territory] and a gold mine in Azerbaijan’s Kalbajar region," Agakishiyev said. "Besides these regions, located between Armenia and Nagorno Karabakh, they consider the other five regions in the east as a buffer zone, and, accordingly, not a cent or dram [Armenian currency] has been invested there. Even in Shusha [an ancient Azerbaijani town], the territory that used to be settled by Azerbaijanis is in poor condition. Amenities have been provided only in Khankandi [the center of the self-proclaimed Nagorno Karabakh republic]. The population of Karabakh mainly includes women and children, while men work in Russian cities. This being said, construction of a city with a population of 100,000 just looks implausible."

Nagorno Karabakh, along with seven surrounding Azerbaijani regions, has been occupied by Armenian armed forces since a fragile cease-fire was signed by the two South Caucasus republics following a brutal war in the early 1990s.

Ethnic Armenian separatists in Nagorno Karabakh, backed by Armenia, declared so-called independence in 1991, which has not been recognized by the international community.

Talks between Azerbaijan and Armenia to settle the long-standing Nagorno Karabakh conflict, brokered by US, Russian and French mediators, have been largely fruitless so far.