Azernews.Az

Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov at a meeting with OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs brokering Nagorno-Karabakh conflict settlement in Paris on Monday urged a withdrawal of Armenian troops from occupied Azerbaijani territory, Foreign Ministry spokesman Elman Abdullayev told reporters.

"At the meeting, Mammadyarov said that the occupation is an undeniable fact. The fact of occupation by Armenia casts doubt on the future development of the region," Abdullayev said.

The Foreign Ministry spokesman said the issue of Ramil Safarov, an Azerbaijani army officer who had been serving a life sentence in Hungary for the 2004 killing of an Armenian officer in Budapest, should be considered together with the liberation of the occupied lands of Azerbaijan. The issue of the Azerbaijani officer is associated with the presence of one million refugees and IDPs -- displaced during the 1990s war with Armenia -- and the ongoing occupation. The work of the Minsk Group co-chairs should be aimed at a withdrawal of the occupying forces from Azerbaijan, Abdullayev said.

At the meeting with Mammadyarov, the co-chairs focused on the August 31 decision of the government of Azerbaijan to pardon Ramil Safarov. They expressed their "deep concern and regret for the damage the pardon and any attempts to glorify the crime" have done to the peace process and trust between the sides.