Airline Industry Information
January 16, 2013 Wednesday
Azerbaijan issues warning on Khankendi Airport
The government of Azerbaijan said it has strongly condemned the
planned opening of Khankendi airport in Armenian-occupied
Nagorno-Karabakh.
Ahead of the next meeting of EuroNest PA, the head of the Azerbaijani
delegation, Elkhan Suleymanov said that the International Civil
Aviation Organization and the European Civil Aviation Conference
should not certify the opening of a new airport.
He said that the airport, in the Armenian-occupied Nagorno-Karabakh,
violates Azerbaijan’s airspace and the rules of international law.
Suleymanov added that operating civil flights in Nagorno-Karabakh
without the consent of the State Civil Aviation Administration of the
Republic of Azerbaijan, would contradict the 1994 Chicago Convention
on Civil Aviation.
The move would also go against the principles of state sovereignty and
territorial integrity of Baku, recognised in its Resolutions No. 822,
854, 873, and 884, by the UN Security Council and confirmed in similar
documents by the European Parliament, PACE, OSCE PA, and other
international organizations, he said.
This controversy follows a period of renewed efforts by the
international community, together with the mediation of the OSCE Minsk
Group, to achieve a peaceful settlement of the ‘frozen conflict’ of
the Nagorno-Karabakh region.
The region seized by separatist Armenian paramilitary groups together
with seven surrounding districts in Azerbaijan in the aftermath of the
collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s.
In October last year, Armenia announced its intention to open the
airport of Khankendi in order to operate civil flights from and to
Yerevan.