As the world community is aware, Armenia, intending to enlarge its territory by usurping neighboring lands, started aggression against Azerbaijan at the end of XX century as though to let Nagorno-Karabakh Armenians determine their fate themselves in the inseparable part of Azerbaijan. As a result of the undeclared war, one fifth of Azerbaijan’s territory was occupied by Armenia in 1988-1993 bringing total size of the territories violently cut off from Azerbaijan in last century to 40%. As a result of the occupation, over 20 thousand our citizens were slain, thousands of people were wounded, became disabled, and were taken captives and hostages. About 900 settlements were destroyed; over 1 million people became refugees and IDPs. Hundreds of historical, cultural, architectural monuments, industrial, agricultural, construction objects, public and private buildings were destroyed and burned, serious damages were inflicted on Azerbaijani economy and citizens’ private property.
After occupying Nagorno-Karabakh and 7 surrounding districts, Armenia started settling Armenians in Azerbaijani territories being under their control, building churches in settlements, destroying or falsifying and armenializing everything belonging to Azerbaijanis, in general, to Muslims under a special plan and on a state level. According to the information available, tens of thousands of Armenians lived not only in Nagorno-Karabakh, but also in surrounding regions and the principal attention during that process was directed to Shusha, Lachin and Kalbajar cities. At the same time, from 200 to 2000 people lived in Agdam, Gubadli, Jabrail and Zangelan regions. The Armenian leadership lends these territories, grants credits and provides other financial assistance, different industrial and construction objects are built to fulfill their plan to bring the population of Nagorno-Karabakh up to 300 thousand people till 2010.
Formerly a special mission of the OSCE was arranged to investigate facts about Armenians’ settling in Azerbaijani occupied territories and the mission fixed existence of illegal settlement facts. Much to my regret, researches of that mission didn’t yield any positive result and didn’t make Armenia abstain from actions violating the 1949 Geneva Convention “On human rights during armed conflicts” and demands of other international rules. Contrary to it, impunity condition at the international area gave this annexationist state full scope and they widen the scale of illegal actions aimed at the establishment of mythic “Great Armenia” at the expense of other states’ territory.
The participants of the round table on subject “Settlement of Armenians in Azerbaijani occupied territories” appealed to the UNO, the OSCE, and heads of the OSCE Minsk Group member-states calling them on to take strict measures to prevent Armenia from illegal settlement actions and apply corresponding sanctions against them.
The appeal “Settlement of Armenians in Azerbaijani occupied territories” was adopted by the participants of the round table held by Public Association for “Protection of Rights of Migrants and Internally Displaced Persons in Azerbaijan” together with “Association for Civil society Development in Azerbaijan” on 14 May, 2008, in Baku.