Azernews.Az

By Sara Rajabova

The Organization of Islamic Cooperation has again condemned Armenia's occupation and annexation policy against Azerbaijan and urged a withdrawal of Armenian troops from the neighboring country's territories occupied since the 1990s war.

The position of the OIC member states on the long-standing Nagorno-Karabakh conflict between the two South Caucasus neighbors was reflected in a declaration adopted in conclusion of the 39th session of the OIC Council of Foreign Ministers in Djibouti, the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry said on Monday.

The declaration denounced Armenia's aggression and demanded an immediate withdrawal of its armed forces from the occupied territories of Azerbaijan.

The OIC has so far passed several resolutions on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov thanked the OIC countries and the organization's secretary general in particular for their support to Azerbaijan's just cause in the ongoing conflict as a result of which twenty percent of Azerbaijan's territory has been under Armenian occupation, around one million Azerbaijanis were expelled and ethnically cleansed from their native lands, and thousands of Azerbaijani cultural and historical monuments, including Islamic heritage sites, were devastated and looted.

Baku committed to talks

Azerbaijan has repeatedly stated that it cannot allow delay of the conflict and will further adhere to this position, Foreign Ministry spokesman Elman Abdullayev has said.

"Baku is ready to negotiate on a comprehensive peace agreement with Armenia. The status quo is unacceptable - the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs [brokering the conflict settlement] have repeatedly confirmed this as well," Abdullayev said.

He noted that Armenia is persistently delaying the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict settlement and failing to display political will to resolve the conflict.

Abdullayev said that Serzh Sargsyan's regime continues committing crimes against its own people and the living conditions in Armenia have become unbearable.

As a result, Abdullayev said, hundreds of thousands of people are leaving Armenia.

"Apparently, this is perceived as freedom and heroism in Armenia," he said. "However, attempting to downplay the tragic situation by gifts from the diaspora and some countries is not the solution to the Armenian people's problems."

Abdullayev said Sargsyan is well aware of the essence of "grave crimes" and "xenophibia".

"While about 35,000 Armenians reside in Azerbaijan, there are no Azerbaijanis in Armenia and there are very few [people of] other nationalities," he said.

"It is enough to mention the bloody ethnic cleansing perpetrated by Armenia in Nagorno-Karabakh against Azerbaijani civilians and the grave crimes committed by Armenians in Khojaly [a town where a massacre was committed against Azerbaijanis in 1992 during the Karabakh war]."

The Karabakh conflict emerged in 1988 when Armenia made territorial claims against the neighboring country and boiled into a brutal war in the early 1990s. Armenian armed forces have since occupied 20 per cent of Azerbaijan's territory, including Nagorno-Karabakh and seven surrounding regions. A fragile ceasefire has been in place since 1994, but peace talks, brokered by US, Russian and French mediators through the Minsk Group, have been mostly fruitless so far.

Armenia has not yet implemented the U.N. Security Council's four resolutions urging its pullout from the occupied Azerbaijani territories.