Azerbaijan remains committed to talks to resolve the conflict with Armenia over Karabakh, its UN envoy has said.
Agshin Mehdiyev told the UN Security Council on Thursday that Baku remains committed to negotiations despite the failure to make progress in 20 years of mediation, ITAR-TASS reported.
Mehdiyev was speaking at the UN Security Council following an address by Irish Foreign Minister Eamon Gilmore in his capacity as chairman-in-office of the OSCE.
Agshin Mehdiyev said that Baku's position is "that the basis for the ongoing political process is the settlement formula based on the termination of the illegal occupation of our territories, the restoration of the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Azerbaijan, the return of displaced persons to their homes and the peaceful coexistence of Azerbaijanis and Armenians in the Nagorno-Karabakh region within Azerbaijan".
Urging respect for human rights and humanitarian law in Nagorno-Karabakh, he said that Armenia “continues unlawful activities on the occupied territories of Azerbaijan which aim at changing their demographic, social and cultural character and strengthen the current status quo of the occupation.”
Mehdiyev expressed the hope that the OSCE chairman-in-office would insist on an immediate and unconditional end to all actions that constitute serious obstacles to a negotiated settlement of the conflict on the basis of international law.
He told the UN Security Council of his concern that recommendations made by the OSCE field assessment missions to Azerbaijan's occupied territories in 2005 and 2010 remained “only on paper” and nothing had been done to translate them into action, APA reported.
The ambassador also said that the OSCE chairmanship should continue work on all conflict cycle elements.
"Better interaction between the OSCE and the United Nations would serve a greater unity of purpose in addressing transnational threats. The OSCE might also provide a forum for addressing safety standards and the timely decommissioning of ageing nuclear power plants," he said.
His remarks come after a senior official in the Azerbaijani Presidential Administration, Ali Hasanov, said earlier this week that Azerbaijan would restore its territorial integrity by "other options" if talks failed to produce a result. Defence Minister Safar Abiyev, meanwhile, said that Azerbaijan was strengthening its armed forces as it was obliged to take back the occupied territories by other means.
The Karabakh conflict began in 1988 when Armenia made claims on the Azerbaijani territory of Nagorno-Karabakh. In a bitter war Armenian armed forces occupied a swathe of Azerbaijani land, including the Nagorno-Karabakh region and seven surrounding districts. Despite a ceasefire in 1994, no long-term peace agreement has been reached.
The nub of the conflict remains unresolved - the competing claims of territorial integrity, which Azerbaijan insists takes precedence in the case of Karabakh, and self-determination, which Armenia wants to see for the Armenians of Karabakh.
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