TURKISH press: Azerbaijan ready to normalize ties with Armenia: FM Bayramov

Azerbaijan is ready to normalize its relations with Armenia under the scope of international law principles, sovereignty and territorial integrity, Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov said Thursday.

“Azerbaijan is ready to normalize relations with Armenia in line with international law, especially sovereignty, territorial integrity, despite all difficulties,” Bayramov said, speaking at the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) Council of Foreign Ministers in Minsk.

He noted that Azerbaijan was able to ensure its territorial integrity after three decades by liberating Nagorno-Karabakh from Armenian occupation, as he highlighted that Armenia has destroyed Azerbaijan’s cultural, historical and religious heritage.

Bayramov met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on the sidelines of the meeting, and discussed bilateral relations, as well as the implementation of the cease-fire declaration.

Just over a year after the war over Nagorno-Karabakh, both Azerbaijan and Armenia have now taken their conflict to International Court of Justice in The Hague.

The case is to be heard next week. It is not yet known when the court will rule.

Prisoners of war have been tortured and executed and bodies of killed soldiers have been desecrated. Prisoners of war were not released despite international obligations, and cultural and religious sites were destroyed, the rights representatives said.

The background to the legal dispute is the war over the Nagorno-Karabakh region, which had been occupied for decades.

More than 6,500 people were killed in the fighting from Sept. 27 to Nov. 9 last year.

Azerbaijan had finally recaptured large parts of the territory lost in the early 1990s with the help of Turkey, with which it shares cultural and religious links. Armenia meanwhile sees Russia as its protecting power for similar reasons.