Azernews.Az

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon hopes that tensions between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the pardoning of Azerbaijani officer Ramil Safarov -- who was transferred to his home country after being jailed for killing an Armenian officer in Hungary in 2004 -- would not affect the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, his spokesman Martin Nesirky was quoted by Russian RIA Novosti news agency as saying on Thursday.

Relations between Armenia and Azerbaijan, which have been at odds since fighting a bitter war in the early 1990s over the Azerbaijani region of Nagorno-Karabakh, have been aggravated by the extradition and subsequent pardoning of Ramil Safarov.

"We hope that this issue will not damage the Nagorno-Karabakh peace process and trust between the sides. There is no alternative to a peaceful settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict," the spokesman said.

Ramil Safarov had been serving a life sentence pronounced by a Budapest court without the right to a parole for 30 years. On August 31, Hungary extradited Safarov to Azerbaijan, where he was pardoned by President Ilham Aliyev.

"The UN underscores the responsibility of member states to adhere to international standards and principles of rule of law in criminal cases in order to ensure accountability and fight impunity," Nesirky said.