Azernews.Az

By Sara Rajabova

Chair of Council on the State Support to the NGOs under the Azerbaijani President rejected Armenians' claims regarding the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

The Armenian side is trying to create a false picture of the situation when it says the conflict concerns only the Armenian citizens of Azerbaijan, which is refuted by the existence of certain documents, Azay Guliyev said.

He made the remarks at a conference titled "Karabakh Issue: Where from and Where to Go", held on January 20 in Ankara.

The conference was co-organized by the Association of Eurasian cooperation of civil society and the Association of Eurasian Economic Cooperation, supported by the Council of State Support to NGOs under the Auspices of the President of Azerbaijan in the framework of financing of foreign NGOs' projects.

"We need to develop a 'roadmap' for resolving the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and achieve recognition of the Khojaly genocide by the parliaments of countries. We must tell the truth about the so-called Armenian genocide to the world, and cooperate with Turkey to prevent Armenia's plans for 2015," Guliyev said.

He noted that 25 years has passed since the beginning of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, and despite the fact that thousands of books and articles have been written on the subject and numerous internet pages have been created concerning the issue, there is still a need for spreading objective information about the origin of the conflict.

Turkish head of the Turkey-Azerbaijan Parliamentary Friendship Group Necdet Unuvar, headmaster of Turkish Giresun University Aygun Attar, Azerbaijani MP Rashad Dogru, Azerbaijani ambassador to Turkey Faik Bagirov, head of the Turkish delegation at the Parliamentary Assembly of the Black Sea Economic Cooperation Organization (BSEC) Ismail Safi, and other officials addressed the conference.

They stressed the need for joining the forces of fraternal people to liberate Nagorno-Karabakh.

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, 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.