OSCE envoy criticizes separatist attempts to open airport in Karabakh
By Sara Rajabova
The OSCE's envoy for the South Caucasus has criticized the attempts to open an airport in Nagorno-Karabakh, an Azerbaijani region occupied by Armenia since a 1990s war.
The issue of opening an airport in the separatist Nagorno-Karabakh led to further heightening of "the atmosphere of mistrust", Trend news agency quoted Special Representative of the OSCE Chairman-in-Office for the South Caucasus, Patrick Murphy, as saying at a press conference on Tuesday.
"Whatever is done regarding this airport, it cannot have any consequences for the status of this territory," he said.
Since the brutal war between Azerbaijan and Armenia that concluded with the signing of a fragile cease-fire in 1994, Armenian armed forces have occupied 20 per cent of Azerbaijan's territory, including Nagorno-Karabakh and seven surrounding regions. Peace talks, brokered by Russia, France and the U.S., the co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group, have been mostly fruitless so far.
While answering an Armenian journalist's question on parallels between the Kosovo and Nagorno-Karabakh conflicts, Murphy said each conflict is different from the others in its scope, underlying reasons, history, involvement of international actors, and each conflict should be settled individually.
Earlier, Azerbaijani deputy parliament speaker Ziyafat Asgarov said that Azerbaijani air traffic controllers would not deal with planes flying to the airport in Khankendi -- the center of the self-proclaimed Nagorno-Karabakh republic run by ethnic Armenians in the occupied Azerbaijani territories.
He said Yerevan uses various pretexts to launch the Khankendi airport operation, but is well aware that Azerbaijan will not allow this to happen.
Also, Russian Ambassador to Azerbaijan Vladimir Dorokhin said earlier that the opening of an airport in Nagorno-Karabakh would seriously exacerbate tension in the region. Dorokhin said this move does not help to restore confidence, would lead to serious aggravation of tension in the region and is therefore counter-productive in terms of the settlement process of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.
Azerbaijani Deputy Foreign Minister Araz Azimov said the commissioning of the airport would be an open violation of the Convention on International Civil Aviation -- which was signed in Chicago in 1944.
Azerbaijan has banned the use of the airspace of the occupied Nagorno-Karabakh, 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 Azerbaijan's position on the issue.