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The Azerbaijani-Belgian inter-parliamentary taskforce is working to put the Khojaly massacre committed by Armenians against Azerbaijanis during the Karabakh war in 1992 on the agenda in Belgium’s parliament, its co-chair has said.

Elkhan Suleymanov, an Azerbaijani lawmaker, told reporters that according to the working group’s plans, discussion of the issue in the Belgian legislature is expected to take place this year.

Armenian armed forces on February 25-26, 1992 attacked Azerbaijani civilians in Khojaly, a town located in Azerbaijan’s Nagorno Karabakh region. 613 people were brutally killed in the attack, including 106 women, 63 children and 70 elderly. 1,275 were taken captives, while 487 became handicapped and 190 went missing.

The inter-parliamentary taskforce’s plans also include airing broadcasts about Azerbaijan on Belgian television, student exchange between the two countries’ universities, fraternizing the Belgian town of Thuin and Azerbaijan’s Shamakhy and erecting a monument to great Azerbaijani poet Mirza Alakbar Sabir in Thuin.

The Azerbaijani parliament on Friday hosted a meeting with a visiting delegation headed by Philippe Blanchart, the Belgian co-chair of the taskforce. Discussions focused on the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict over Nagorno Karabakh and Belgian-Azerbaijani relations.

Briefing the Belgian MPs on the long-standing conflict, First Vice-Speaker Ziyafat Asgarov noted that about 20 percent of Azerbaijan’s territory has been under Armenian occupation for two decades. He also reminded that the Armenians perpetrated ethnic cleansing in the occupied land.

The vice-speaker stressed that the U.N. Security Council has passed four resolutions urging an unconditional pullout of Armenian armed forces from the occupied Azerbaijani territories, but none of them have been enforced so far.

"If the Belgian parliament raises the issue of a fair settlement of the Nagorno Karabakh conflict at its sessions, we will be able to conclude that Europe has drawn far from double standards," Asgarov said.

Blanchart told a news briefing after the meeting that the Belgian MPs’ visit to Azerbaijan mainly aimed to discuss the Karabakh issue. He said he will visit Azerbaijani regions on Saturday and meet there with IDPs -- displaced during the 1990s war with Armenia -- and hold meetings with representatives of the entities dealing with their problems.

This story is published by AzerNEWS Weekly under a project funded by the Foundation for State Assistance to the Development of the Media under the President of the Azerbaijan Republic.