The Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry has said that Armenian refugees can return to Azerbaijan once the Karabakh conflict has been settled.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Elkhan Polukhov was commenting on remarks made earlier on Thursday by the head of Armenia's State Migration Service that Armenian refugees would like to return to Azerbaijan.
Azerbaijan has never been against their return, Polukhov said.
"But first the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict has to be settled and this could begin with the withdrawal of Armenian troops from the occupied Azerbaijani territories. Then all the people internally displaced in Azerbaijan should return to their homes in Nagorno-Karabakh and the seven neighbouring districts," Polukhov said.
"After all this, the Azerbaijani and Armenian communities of Nagorno-Karabakh will work out a status for Nagorno-Karabakh as part of Azerbaijan. And the following stage will be consideration of the options for the return to Azerbaijan of Armenians who left the country during the Karabakh war."
Gagik Yeganyan, head of the Armenian Migration Service, told a press conference in Yerevan yesterday that Armenian refugees from Azerbaijan had approached the service over the point in the Muskoka statement by the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairing countries about the right of all refugees and internally displaced persons to return to their previous places of residence.
He said that many refugees were approaching the Migration Service and other government agencies to find out when this would happen.
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