09 February 2005, 23:53
OSCE missions to visit occupied Azerbaijan territory
"We expect that the mission to reveal the settlement of Azerbaijan's occupied territory will submit its report to the OSCE Minsk Group and then to the OSCE Permanent Council," Azerbaijan Deputy Foreign Minister Araz Azimov told a press conference. He believes that facts brought by the Azerbaijan side have been confirmed. In particular, materials obtained from public and other sources concerning the resettlement of 20-23 thousand people to the occupied territory were presented to the mission. Even if the mission detected a half or a third of these people, it confirms the fact of illegal settlement anyhow, Mr Azimov said. He also pointed out groundlessness of the arguments presented by Armenia that this territory is settled with Armenians who lived in Baku, Gyandzha and Sumgait earlier. He emphasized that the international humanitarian law unambiguously forbids populating occupied territories with people who did not live there earlier, regardless of their origin.
The diplomat from Azerbaijan did not rule out a possibility that there would be new visits to the occupied territory. For one week, members of the above-mentioned mission, who represented seven foreign countries, investigated cases of the illegal Armenian settlement of Azerbaijan's occupied territory.
At the same time, according to Foreign Minister of Nagorny Karabakh Armen Melikian, the foreign experts registered 5 thousand Armenians settled in the regions of Azerbaijan adjacent to Nagorny Karabakh.
Author: Zaur Rasulzade, CK correspondent
