Azernews.Az

By Vafa Ismayilova

Baku has strongly condemned Yerevan's statement justifying the aggressive separatism of radical Armenian nationalists in Azerbaijan's Nagorno-Karabakh region in the late 1980s.

In a statement posted on the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry website on February 21, the ministry's press service department said: "The statement of the Armenian Foreign Ministry in support of the illegal decision of February 20, 1988, which marked the beginning of the aggressive separatism of the radical Armenians of the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast (NKAO) of the Azerbaijan SSR, indicates that Armenia is still far from responsible behaviour and building relations based on the rule of international law."

The Foreign Ministry press service department underlined that Armenia's support for aggressive Armenian separatists and its outspoken territorial claims and aggressive policy against Azerbaijan has led to decades of military occupation, bloody ethnic cleansing in the region, violation of the fundamental rights of one million people and great destruction.

"This situation has seriously hampered the region's sustainable development, peace, security and progress for many years," the statement added.

It noted that at a time when international law has been established, the occupation factor has been eliminated and an agreement has been reached on the cessation of hostilities, official Yerevan again comes out with statements inciting ethnic strife, which is an indicator of the destructive thinking of the Armenian leadership.

"We strongly condemn the fact that the Armenian side, instead of fulfilling its obligations and taking practical steps towards normalizing relations between the two states and ensuring peaceful coexistence in the region, encourages enmity. This approach has no future and is nothing more than leading the Armenian people into the abyss," the press service department concluded.

On February 20, 1988, an extraordinary session of the NKAO Soviet of People’s Deputies passed a resolution to unify the region with Armenia. No representatives of Azerbaijan attended.

The statement stressed that the "so-called decision contradicted the Constitution of the USSR, the Law on NKAO of 1981, as well as all other relevant normative legal acts".

The war between Azerbaijan and Armenia resumed on September 27, 2020, after Armenia's firing at Azerbaijani civilians and military positions. Azerbaijan responded by launching a counter-offensive operation along the line of contact of the troops.

On November 10, Baku and Yerevan signed a Moscow-brokered deal that brought an end to six weeks of fighting. The signed agreement obliged Armenia to withdraw its troops from the Azerbaijani lands that it has occupied since the early 1990s.

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