Four foreigners excluded from Azerbaijani list of “persona non grata”
By Sara Rajabova
The Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry has decided to exclude four foreign nationals, previously included in its list of "persona non grata" for the illegal visit to the Armenian-occupied territory of Azerbaijan.
The foreigners excluded from the list of "persona non grata" are a member of the Russian State Duma Aleksey Mitrofanov, head of the Moscow office of 'Voice of America' James Brook, and Johns Hopkins University students, Ivan Benovich and Nichola Vondra.
The names of these individuals were excluded from the list after their appeal to the Azerbaijani government, in which they requested their names to be excluded from this list. They regretted about their visits and stressed that they recognize the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan.
As a rule, the appeals asking to cancel this decision indicate that these persons were taken to the occupied territory by deception.
Unauthorized visits to Nagorno-Karabakh and other regions of Azerbaijan occupied by Armenia are deemed illegal and individuals paying such visits are included in the "black list" of the Foreign Ministry.
Earlier, the Foreign Ministry released a list of 335 people those declared persona non grata over illegal visits to the Armenian-occupied territories.
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.
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.
The UN Security Council has passed four resolutions on Armenian withdrawal from the Azerbaijani territory, but they have not been enforced to this day.