Azernews.Az

By Sara Rajabova

Persons who have visited Nagorno-Karabakh will be considered persona non grata in Azerbaijan, Foreign Ministry spokesman Elman Abdullayev told Day.Az website while commenting on a visit of Russian journalists and public figures to Khankendi.

Khankendi is the center of the self-proclaimed Nagorno-Karabakh republic run by ethnic Armenians in the Azerbaijani territories under Armenian occupation.

According to Abdullayev, Azerbaijan's position of principle on the issue has been repeatedly expressed. "And it lies in the fact that people who have visited the occupied territories of Azerbaijan without having agreed upon the visit with relevant authorities of the country will be considered persona non grata in the country," he said.

Abdullayev said that since visits to the occupied territories of Azerbaijan are illegal, the visit of the said persons is a violation of the law "On State Border" of Azerbaijan.

"Of course, Azerbaijan, in turn, will scrutinize the visit as soon as possible and issue relevant instructions to our embassies," he said.

At the invitation of Armenian-Russian Cooperation, a Moscow-based organization, a number of Russian journalists paid a visit to Armenia and the occupied Nagorno-Karabakh region.

Unlike previous cases of illegal visits to the occupied territories of Azerbaijan, Armenian sources this time didn't hasten to disclose the names and positions of all visitors.

However, it became clear that the group included TV host Anna Chapman, member of the Public Chamber of Russia Denis Dvornikov, public figure, human rights activist Sergei Karnaukhov, correspondent of the Rossiyskiy Reporter (Russian Reporter) magazine and correspondent of DairyNews news agency Alexandra Ryzhkova, and others.

Azerbaijan has repeatedly warned foreign officials and diplomats over visits to the Azerbaijani territories occupied by Armenia, saying this contradicts international law. The Foreign Ministry has stated that such visits, paid without prior notification of the relevant authorities of Azerbaijan, are illegal and damaging to the settlement process on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

Recently, the Foreign Ministry published a list of those declared persona non grata over illegal visits to the Armenian-occupied territories, which included 335 people.

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's four resolutions on Armenian withdrawal have not been enforced to this day.

Peace talks aimed at resolving the long-standing conflict, mediated by Russia, France and the U.S. through the OSCE Minsk Group, are underway on the basis of a peace outline proposed by the Minsk Group co-chairs and dubbed the Madrid Principles. The negotiations have been largely fruitless so far.