Azernews.Az

By Sara Rajabova

A decision to operate the Khankandi airport in Azerbaijan's occupied Nagorno-Karabakh region is a move which will harm the process of settling the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict, according to US Ambassador in Baku Richard Morningstar.

Morningstar warned last week that such a decision would lead to undesirable consequences, a local television channel reported on Sunday.

"I can say one thing for sure that, if the Khankandi airport operates, it will not help the peace process," Morningstar noted. "The US position is that both sides should resolve this issue within the framework of international law. I reiterate that any flight from the airport would negatively affect the peace process, as it is said in the statements of the OSCE Minsk Group, as well as others."

A day earlier, the United States urged the conflict parties to find a diplomatic solution to the issues relating to the operation of the airport, in keeping with relevant international agreements, customary international law, and the current practice between Armenia and Azerbaijan with respect to civilian air travel.

Addressing a briefing in Washington last Saturday, US State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland also mentioned that the Minsk Group issued statements on April 14, 2011 and in July 2012, representing the views of the United States, France and Russia, in calling for a diplomatic solution.

"We also, in those statements, reiterated that the operation of this airport should not be used to support any claim of change in the status of Nagorno-Karabakh," Nuland noted.

The Azerbaijani government has said commissioning of the airport would be an open violation of the Convention on International Civil Aviation.

Azerbaijan has banned the use of the airspace of Nagorno-Karabakh, which is occupied by Armenia, as no one can guarantee a safe air corridor in the area, the head of the Azerbaijani Civil Aviation Administration, Arif Mammadov, said earlier.

The International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) and the European Civil Aviation Conference (ICAC) support the position of Azerbaijan on the issue.

The airport in Khankandi, which was built in 1974, has been inoperational since the early 1990s since war broke out between Armenia and Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh. Both Armenia's capital Yerevan, which has not recognized the "Nagorno-Karabakh Republic", and the self-proclaimed entity itself had repeatedly raised the issue of reopening the airport in recent years.

Armenian armed forces have occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan's territory since the brutal war, including Nagorno-Karabakh and seven surrounding regions. Armenia has not yet implemented the U.N. Security Council's four resolutions on its withdrawal from the occupied Azerbaijani territories.