Nagorno-Karabakh is an internationally recognized part of Azerbaijan that is currently under the occupation of Armenian armed forces together with seven adjacent regions, Azerbaijani Ambassador to UK Tahir Taghizadeh said Oct. 1 in a letter addressed to the newspaper.
In his letter, the ambassador was expressing concern over an article on the Nagorno-Karabakh, published by the Financial Times.
“I am writing to raise my concern about the mentioning of Nagorno-Karabakh as a disputed enclave,” Ambassador Taghizadeh said. “It is of utmost importance that things are called by their names.”
“Nagorno-Karabakh is an internationally recognized part of the Republic of Azerbaijan that is currently under the military occupation of Armenian armed forces together with seven adjacent regions,” he said.
The ambassador went on to note that what exists in Nagorno-Karabakh and surrounding occupied territories is an unrecognised separatist regime and should be called as such.
“To call it a “disputed enclave” plays into the hands of the separatist regime which strives to gain international legitimacy. It has been set up in violation of the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan, and forced the eviction of hundreds of thousands of ethnic Azerbaijanis amounting to ethnic cleansing,” the ambassador stressed.
The conflict between the two South Caucasus countries began in 1988 when Armenia made territorial claims against Azerbaijan.
As a result of the ensuing war, in 1992 Armenian armed forces occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan, including the Nagorno-Karabakh region and seven surrounding districts.
The two countries signed a ceasefire agreement in 1994. The co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group, Russia, France and the U.S. are currently holding peace negotiations.
Armenia has not yet implemented four U.N. Security Council resolutions on the liberation of the Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding regions.
/Trend/
