Azernews.Az

By Sara Rajabova

Time is on Azerbaijan's side in its Nagorno-Karabakh conflict with Armenia, a senior Azerbaijani official has said.

Ali Hasanov, head of the Presidential Administration's social and political affairs department, made the remarks at a workshop on the role of youth in the country's social and political life supported by the ruling Yeni (New) Azerbaijan Party.

Hasanov noted that Azerbaijan is becoming stronger, while Armenia is getting weaker day by day and its people are leaving the country.

"If the situation does not change, only one million people will be left there," he said. "The people remaining in Armenia are the elderly, sick and those who can't leave the country. In fact, all the resources of this country have been exhausted."

Armenia has a tiny population of less than 3.5 million. In the last three years 5 percent or about 160,000 Armenian citizens left the country, according to Armenian Report portal.

The exodus trend emerged in 2008, and about 200,000 people have left the country since then.

According to a 2012 survey, 34 percent of the Armenian population are unemployed. Given Armenia's small population, if the dangerous demographic situation in the South Caucasus republic persists, it may soon have almost no labor force left.

According to Hasanov, the territory of the occupied Nagorno-Karabakh region is used for drug cultivation and trafficking, as well as other illegal activities.

As a result of the occupation of 20 percent of Azerbaijani territory, the 132 kilometer-long state border area was left without control. Because of the lack of proper control, the occupied territories of Azerbaijan are used as transit territory for drug trafficking from Afghanistan to the CIS countries and Europe.

"Sooner or later Azerbaijan will liberate Nagorno-Karabakh from separatists," Hasanov said. "Of course, we will drive out the separatists, and those, who were born and live there, will remain as they were. But we will suppress the Armenian separatist regime in Nagorno-Karabakh and Armenia's support for the regime. This will surely happen. The Azerbaijani territory occupied by Armenia has not increased the Armenians' resources. Instead, it has become a problem to find an Armenian supporting the current regime. It will be impossible to maintain old Russian tanks and equipment."

Hasanov said that if Armenia benefited from Azerbaijan's projects, millions of dollars would be transferred to its annual budget.

"Therefore, we are optimistic," he said. "If the existing status quo exhausts our patience, we have the opportunity to shift to other means, which we will avail of."

The Nagorno-Karabakh conflict emerged in 1988 when Armenia made territorial claims against Azerbaijan. Since a lengthy war in the early 1990s that displaced over one million Azerbaijanis, Armenian armed forces have occupied over 20 percent of Azerbaijan's internationally recognized territory, including Nagorno-Karabakh and seven adjacent regions. The UN Security Council has adopted four resolutions on Armenia's withdrawal from the Azerbaijani territory, but Armenia has not followed them to this day.

Russia, France and the U.S. -- co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group -- have long been working to broker a solution of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, but their efforts have been largely fruitless so far.

Peace talks are underway on the basis of a peace outline proposed by the Minsk Group co-chairs and dubbed the Madrid Principles, also known as Basic Principles. The document envisions a return of the territories surrounding Nagorno-Karabakh to Azerbaijani control; determining the final legal status of Nagorno-Karabakh; a corridor linking Armenia to the region; and the right of all internally displaced persons to return home.