Azernews.Az

Resettlement of Syrian Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh is a great provocative plan of Armenia, a senior Azerbaijani lawmaker told Trend news agency Monday.

Armenia has been promising to accommodate Armenians living in different parts of the world in Nagorno-Karabakh, an Azerbaijani region occupied by Armenia, but it has not managed to do so yet, said Aydin Mirzazade, deputy chairman of the parliamentary committee on security and defense.

"It means an open acknowledgment that Armenia occupied Azerbaijani territories. They used to say that allegedly the community has established an independent state in Nagorno-Karabakh, now they admit that it is an activity of Armenia and resettlement of Syrian Armenians there is an official policy of this country," Mirzazade said.

According to him, Armenia's violating the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan and provoking deliberate changes in the ethnic composition of the occupied territories are unsuccessful attempts to find a way out of the predicament it is facing.

"I think that they will not succeed, because the OSCE mission, investigating the facts as a result of surveys conducted in the occupied territories, noted the fact of the illegal resettlement of population, and announced that it is contrary to international conventions. On the other hand, it is stressed that today these people do not have documents and are dependent on the local military regime," the MP said.

In addition, Armenians residing in Syria "have always used the authorities" as much as possible, Mirzazade said.

"They have always had good opportunities, the government has always paid special attention to them. Today, in the civil war, they do not support either side, and in bad days for the state tend to leave the country, while, in principle, they should have been protecting the Assad regime," he added.

Mirzazade said Armenia is trying hard to settle Syrian Armenians in Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh. "But the Syrian Armenians themselves look at Armenia as a temporary place of residence," he said.

This plan of the Armenians, he added, as well as their previous plans, are falling through, and Armenia has one way out - to withdraw its troops from the occupied territories and recognize the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan.

The two South Caucasus republics fought a lengthy war in the early 1990s. About 20 percent of Azerbaijani territory has been under the occupation of Armenian armed forces since a fragile ceasefire was signed in 1994. Peace talks brokered by US, Russian and French mediators have been largely fruitless so far.

Armenia has not yet implemented the U.N. Security Council's four resolutions on a pullout from Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding regions.