Azernews.Az

By Sara Rajabova

Azerbaijani official has lambasted Armenia for holding destructive position in settlement process of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, which led the peace talks to a deadlock.

Novruz Mammadov, deputy head of Azerbaijani presidential administration, chief of the administration’s foreign relations department said Armenia doesn’t want to take a constructive position to solve the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

He said President Ilham Aliyev quite clearly expressed his position on this issue at a meeting dedicated to the results of 2015.

President Aliyev noted that Armenia wants to maintain the status quo as long as possible and it is unwilling to withdraw its troops from the occupied territories and accepts negotiations as a process, trying to buy time.

Armenia is unwilling to peacefully resolve the long-standing conflict and is interested in and determined to maintain the current status quo that means keeping part of Azerbaijan’s internationally-recognized territory under occupation. Therefore, status quo was deemed as unacceptable by Azerbaijan and international community.

“Unfortunately, we haven’t seen any steps taken in this direction yet,” said Mammadov. “As a result, no progress was achieved during the last joint meeting of the presidents and the co-chairs. No matter how hard they try to show that they do everything possible to resolve the conflict, what they do is not enough, there is some component missing in the steps they have taken.”

President Ilham Aliyev has recently noted this meeting was of formal nature and yielded no results.

The efforts of the OSCE Minsk Group, an international framework to settle the conflict through co-chairing of the United States, France and Russia, have yielded no efforts just in the previous years.

The much-anticipated meeting of the Azerbaijani and Armenian presidents last December in Switzerland also left hopes for the breakthrough in the peace talks unfulfilled for the next time.

Mammadov said Armenia makes every effort to delay the resolution of the problem.

“On the other hand, the Armenian side doesn’t want to take concrete steps to resolve the conflict, it is unwilling to take a constructive position, despite the fact that it is primarily in their interests,” Mammadov said. “They should understand that it is impossible to keep this situation."

Mammadov further noted that Azerbaijan and the international community understand that the Armenian leadership tries to delay the conflict settlement by sacrificing the interests of the country for the sake of its own narrow interests.

Armenia refuses to implement the U.N. Security Council's four resolutions on its immediate and unconditional pullout from the neighboring country's territories.

Impunity for its criminal acts encourages Armenia to keep on the occupation of Azerbaijan’s ancestral lands and prolong the unfruitful negotiation process further.

Armenia captured Nagorno-Karabakh and seven surrounding regions from Azerbaijan in a war that followed the Soviet breakup in 1991. More than 20,000 Azerbaijanis were killed and nearly 1 million were displaced as a result of the war.

Large-scale hostilities ended with a Russia-brokered ceasefire in 1994 but Armenia continued the occupation in defiance of four UN Security Council resolutions calling for immediate and unconditional withdrawal.

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Sara Rajabova is AzerNews’ staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @SaraRajabova

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