(MENAFN- Trend News Agency ) Details added (first version posted on 15:00)
Baku, Azerbaijan, Feb. 22
Trend:
Armenian Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian needs to be enlightened about the basic principles of international law and the Helsinki Final Act, spokesman for the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry Hikmat Hajiyev said in Baku Feb. 22.
Hajiyev was commenting on Nalbandian's recent statement at the Committee on Foreign Affairs of the European Parliament.
'In his statement Nalbandian was distorting facts of the Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and the norms and principles of international law, as well as the Helsinki Final Act,' Hajiyev said. 'Nalbandian put forward absurd allegations against Azerbaijan.'
Azerbaijani official said that the respect to the territorial integrity, sovereignty and inviolability of internationally recognized borders of countries is a fundamental corner stone of contemporary international relations.
'The unlawfulness within the Soviet legal system of attempted unilateral secession of Nagorno-Karabakh by Armenian separatists without Azerbaijan's consent was confirmed at the highest constitutional level,' he said. 'The definition of the territory of Azerbaijan as it proceeded to independence and in the light of the applicable law clearly included Nagorno-Karabakh.'
Hajiyev said that Armenia's territorial claims against Azerbaijan are backed with violence, terror and ethnic cleansing of indigenous Azerbaijani community of Nagorno-Karabakh and transformed into the large-scale war unleashed by Armenia against Azerbaijan after dissolution of USSR.
'As a result, Armenia occupied 20 percent territories of Azerbaijan by use of force and conduced complete ethnic cleansing of Azerbaijani population in the seized lands and in the territory of Armenia,' he said. 'In order to disguise its direct responsibility for military aggression against Azerbaijan, Armenia distorts and misinterprets the principle of the people's right to self-determination.'
'In reality, such a view has nothing in common with the principle of self-determination set forth in the Charter of the United Nations, the Final Act of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (Helsinki Final Act) of 1975 and other international documents,' he said.
'The fact that the Nagorno-Karabakh is part of Azerbaijan was reaffirmed by the UN Security Council in its relevant resolutions on the conflict and from that time onward has been repeatedly stated at the international level,' Hajiyev said.
He said that it is important to note that the resolutions of the Security Council, recognizing that Nagorno-Karabakh constitutes part of Azerbaijan and reaffirming the inviolability of international borders and the inadmissibility of the use of force for the acquisition of territory, were adopted after the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh had unilaterally declared their 'independence'.
'To justify his country's illegal territorial claims against Azerbaijan and the use of military force, the Armenian foreign minister misinterprets the documents of international organizations, including EU institutions,' he said.
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