Azernews.Az

By Mushvig Mehdiyev

The European Union can play a role in promoting contacts between the Azerbaijani and Armenian communities of Nagorno-Karabakh, said an official from the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry.

Hikmat Hajiyev, Spokesperson for the Foreign Ministry, said Armenians living in Azerbaijan’s Nagorno-Karabakh region are also Azerbaijani citizens.

Commenting on the meeting between Herbert Salber, EU Special Representative for the South Caucasus and Karen Mirzoyan, so-called Foreign Minister of the self-proclaimed "Nagorno-Karabakh republic", in Yerevan, he said that the Azerbaijani side was informed in advance of this meeting.

"During his visit to Azerbaijan in October 2014, Salber met with the representatives of the Azerbaijani community of Nagorno-Karabakh and became familiar with their views of the conflict’s settlement," Hajiyev noted.

The Azerbaijani side has repeatedly said that the Azerbaijani and Armenian communities of Azerbaijan’s Nagorno-Karabakh region need to contact with each other, and the EU can play a role in promoting that kind of contacts, said Hajiyev.

Last year, Rovshan Rzayev, a member of the Azerbaijani delegation at the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, said starting a dialogue between the Azerbaijani and Armenian communities of Nagorno-Karabakh could contribute to the peace talks underway for settling the conflict in the region.

Meanwhile, Bayram Safarov, Head of the Azerbaijani community of Nagorno-Karabakh, claimed last year that negotiations between Azerbaijan and Armenia communities on the Negrono-Karabakh should continue at different levels.

He also blamed Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan for disrupting the talks between the communities.

Since a lengthy war in the early 1990s, the Armenian armed forces have occupied over 20 percent of Azerbaijan's internationally recognized territory, including Nagorno-Karabakh and seven adjacent regions.

As a result of the Armenian occupation, every 8th person in Azerbaijan has been compelled to leave their homes and live as a refugee and internally displaced person. Over a million refugees and IDPs cannot return to their ancestral lands because of the deadlock in the resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

Long-standing efforts by the US, Russian, and French mediators have been largely fruitless so far.

Armenia's military aggression has affected the lives of over 20,000 Azerbaijanis with 4,866 reported missing, almost 100,000 injured, and 50,000 disabled.

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