Azernews.Az

By Sara Rajabova

Washington attached special importance to improving conditions of refugees and IDPs in Azerbaijan.

U.S. Ambassador Richard Morningstar made the remark at the meeting with Azerbaijani Deputy Prime Minister, Chairman of the State Committee for Refugee and IDP Affairs Ali Hasanov last week, AzerTag state news agency reported.

Morningstar expressed readiness to contribute to what the Azerbaijani government was doing to solve the problems of refugees and IDPs.

The envoy lauded the Azerbaijani government`s allocation of large amount of funds to improve the living conditions of refugees and IDPs.

Hasanov, in turn, praised the U.S. embassy`s humanitarian assistance to Azerbaijanis that had become refugees and IDPs as a result of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

He also hailed Azerbaijan-U.S. cooperation as good, saying relations between the two countries entered a new stage of development.

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.