Armenia shows marked indifference to international law
By Laman Sadigova
Azerbaijan’s Deputy Prime Minister Ali Hasanov called on the Armenian government to respect international law and avoid settling Syrian refugees in the occupied Azerbaijani territory.
Hasanov, who also heads the State Committee for Refugees and IDPs made this remark at the third International humanitarian donor conference on Syria, held in Kuwait.
The Armenian government, ignoring all the rules and principles of international law, continues to settle ethnic Armenians from Syria in the occupied Azerbaijani territories.
Hasanov said that the donations made during the conference should be directed not toward the funding of illegal occupancy, but to the humanitarian needs of Syrian refugees.
Armenia continues to use force to sustain military occupation of Azerbaijan's territories and prevent one million Azerbaijani refugees and IDP's from returning to their homes.
He noted that there are more than one million refugees and internally displaced persons as a result of Armenia's ethnic cleansing activities against Azerbaijanis.
In 2013 about 200 Armenian refugees from Syria settled in the occupied Zangilan region, which was an evidence of the illegal settlement policy pursued by Yerevan.
Baku has repeatedly warned Yerevan against such international law violation in Azerbaijani lands and called on refraining illegal disposal, conduct of military training, as well as destruction of historical and religious monuments.
Stressing Azerbaijan's participation in humanitarian projects, Hasanov noted that the Heydar Aliyev Foundation continues its humanitarian projects in Pakistan, Georgia, the Netherlands, Egypt, Romania, Russia, France, Italy, the Vatican, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Relief Agency International Development in Azerbaijan (AIDA) - in Latin America, Africa and Asia despite the global economic crisis.
Armenia occupied over 20 percent of Azerbaijan's internationally recognized territory, including the Nagorno-Karabakh and seven adjacent regions, after laying territorial claims against its South Caucasus neighbor. This led to a brutal war in the early 1990s. Long-standing efforts by U.S, 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.
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