Armenia “torpedoes” Karabakh talks – Azeri official
Turan news agency
10 Nov 04
Baku, 10 November: The inclusion of the issue of Azerbaijan’s occupied
territories into the agenda of the 59th session of the UN General
Assembly seriously worries the Armenian leadership, Matin Mirza, press
secretary of the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry, said commenting on
Armenian Foreign Minister Vardan Oskanyan’s statement about Yerevan’s
readiness to resume the Prague negotiations. He pointed out that
Armenia has not officially informed Azerbaijan about its readiness
to resume the negotiations and Baku has learnt it from the mass media.
Mirza said it is inadmissible to link the resumption of the Prague
negotiations to the forthcoming UN discussions. Oskanyan’s remarks
that Azerbaijan should not hope that the Prague negotiations can
be conducted at the same time as the UN discussions are aimed at
“torpedoing” the negotiating process. The Armenian side resorts to
such “destructive” tricks every time there are favourable conditions
for making progress in the negotiations, Mirza said.
As for the Armenian side’s aspiration to achieve direct negotiations
between Azerbaijan and the Karabakh separatists, according to the
mandate of the Minsk Conference and the OSCE Minsk Group of 1992,
the sides to the conflict are Armenia and Azerbaijan. The Azerbaijani
and Armenian communities of Nagornyy Karabakh are interested sides.
Mirza stressed that under no circumstances will Azerbaijan withdraw its
proposal to discuss the situation in the occupied territories at the
UN. He said that Azerbaijan’s initiative is dictated by its anxiety
about Armenia artificially resettling the occupied territories with
the aim of changing the demographic situation.