Baku dismisses Armenian distortion of US congressional panel's decision
By Sara Rajabova
A decision made by the US congressional subcommittee on foreign appropriations was incorrectly interpreted by Armenia, Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry spokesman Elman Abdullayev told media on July 26.
Abdullayev was commenting on the subcommittee's decision on the allocation of assistance to the victims of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, rather than the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh.
The Ministry spokesman said Armenian media were distorting the information about the subcommittee's allocating financial aid to address the humanitarian needs of the conflict victims.
The U.S. House of Representatives' subcommittee, in charge of working out the project on foreign aid in the fiscal year 2014, gave priority to rendering humanitarian assistance to the population of the countries affected by the conflict in Syria. Specific amount for rendering aid to the Caucasus countries was not cited for the first time in two decades.
The subcommittee's decision envisages rendering humanitarian assistance to the victims of the conflict, i.e. the Azerbaijani population of Nagorno-Karabakh, Abdullayev said.
The subcommittee rejected the demands of pro-Armenian congressmen to allocate $5 million worth of aid to Nagorno-Karabakh in 2014. Moreover, members of the subcommittee rejected the proposal of pro-Armenian congressmen that the Armenian community of Nagorno-Karabakh participate in the negotiations on the conflict settlement, Abdullayev said.
The congressional subcommittee also declined the proposal to toughen the anti-Azerbaijan Section 907 to the Freedom Support Act.
Section 907 was passed by the U.S. Congress in 1992. This law bans direct aid to the Azerbaijan government.
In October 24, 2001, the Senate gave the U.S. President the ability to waive Section 907. That waiver has been exercised every year since 2002.
Armenia occupied over 20 percent of Azerbaijan's internationally recognized territory, including Nagorno-Karabakh and seven adjacent regions, after laying territorial claims against its South Caucasus neighbor that caused a brutal war in the early 1990s. Long-standing efforts by US, Russian and French mediators have been largely fruitless so far.
As a result of the Armenian occupation, in Nagorno-Karabakh, adjacent regions and the regions bordering on Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh over a million Azerbaijanis were deprived of their places of residence and turned into refugees and IDPs.
The UN Security Council has passed four resolutions on Armenian withdrawal from the Azerbaijani territory, but they have not been enforced to this day.