Azernews.Az

By Sara Rajabova

An Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry official has castigated Armenian Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandyan's statement made in Italy in which he criticized Baku's policy.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Elman Abdullayev said at a press conference on September 23 that Nalbandyan forgets that the government system of Armenia is established on the basis of terror and Armenia is a country that has orchestrated hundreds of terror acts in Azerbaijan.

"A country that glorifies terrorists and presents them to the young generation as heroes of the Armenian people has no right to preach morals to other countries," Abdullayev said.

Abdullayev added that the remarks of former Armenian President Robert Kocharyan that Azerbaijanis and Armenians are ethnically incompatible should be reminded.

"Doesn't it discredit the authorities of that country? Also, I would like to remind that the current leadership of Armenia was boasting its crime against humanity, the Khojaly genocide," he said.

According to Abdullayev, Armenia's leadership avails of every opportunity to sow enmity between neighboring countries and peoples and xenophobia is promoted by the highest official circles of this country.

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 military aggression of Armenia, over 20,000 Azerbaijanis were killed, 4,866 are reported missing and almost 100,000 were injured, and 50,000 were disabled.

The UN Security Council has passed four resolutions on Armenian withdrawal from the Azerbaijani territory, but they have not been enforced to this day.