04.02.2013 18:10
Azerbaijan has announced that it has serious concerns over the resettlement of Syrian Armenians, who are fleeing violence in their country, in Nagorno-Karabakh, an area over which Armenia and Azerbaijan have been engaged in conflict for more than...
Azerbaijan has announced that it has serious concerns over the resettlement of Syrian Armenians, who are fleeing violence in their country, in Nagorno-Karabakh, an area over which Armenia and Azerbaijan have been engaged in conflict for more than two decades.
"We are seriously concerned over the resettlement of Syrian Armenians in [Azerbaijan's] occupied territories," Azerbaijani Deputy Foreign Minister Araz Azimov told local reporters in Baku on Monday.
Azimov noted that Azerbaijan is not opposed to the placement of Syrian Armenians in other areas, but is totally against the accommodation of Armenian refugees from Syria being resettled in Nagorno-Karabakh, Azerbaijan's predominantly Armenian enclave, occupied by Armenia in the early 1990s.
Armenia is experiencing a considerable population problem as many Armenian inhabitants have been leaving the country. Therefore, the emptier parts of Armenia would be more suitable for the Syrian Armenians, according to Azimov.
"Fifty percent of the Armenian population has left the country. As a result, there are many empty places in the country which might be used to resettle the Syrian Armenians in order to improve the demographic situation," Azimov said, adding that quite different reasons underlie the Karabakh resettlement.
The deputy foreign minister also said that the resettlement of Syrian Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh might encourage terrorist activity in the region. Azimov also stated that 300 Armenians trained as terrorists were sent to Nagorno-Karabakh in 1993 and fought against Azerbaijanis in the region.
Nagorno-Karabakh, a predominantly Armenian enclave within Azerbaijan's borders, and seven other Azerbaijani adjacent territories were occupied in a bloody war in the early 1990s, since when Azerbaijan has been trying to get its lost territories back. One million ethnic Azeris were forced from their homes and more than 30,000 were killed. A cease-fire was brokered in 1994 when officials from both sides engaged in internationally mediated negotiations under the OSCE Minsk Group, a process that received a burst of attention last month.
On Jan. 28, one-day talks were held in the French capital of Paris between Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov and his Armenian counterpart, Edward Nalbandian, which was assessed as a new effort to advance the peace process, according to a statement from Minsk Group co-chairs Russia, France and the United States.
(Cihan/Today's Zaman)