Trend, Azerbaijan
June 16 2011
Azerbaijani official accuses int’l organizations of double standards
16.06.2011 15:38
Azerbaijan, Baku, June 16 / Trend K. Zarbaliyeva /
An Azerbaijani official has accused international organizations of
double standards.
“Azerbaijan fulfills all the decisions,” Deputy Prime Minister,
Chairman of the State
Committee for Refugees and IDPs Ali Hasanov told media in an interview
within the IX
International Conference of Ombudsmen this week.
If Azerbaijan respectsinternational institutions, asopposed to
Armenia, he said, then
why both countries are treated in the same plane? This attitude is
also a double standard.
Azerbaijanis driven out of Armenia are refugees and migrants, he said.
“Their legal status is a refugee,” he said. “But on the other hand, I
think that they are
still foreign, political migrants. I think that we can analyze this
parallel. Some statuses can be united.”
He stressed certain parallels between the problems of refugees and
internally displaced people and migrants. “I think that the Office of
the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and the
International Organization for Migration must work together in this
direction,” he said.
The conflict between the two South Caucasus countries began in 1988
when Armenia made territorial claims against Azerbaijan. Armenian
armed forces have occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan since 1992,
including the Nagorno-Karabakh region and seven surrounding districts.
Azerbaijan and Armenia signed a ceasefire agreement in 1994. The
co-chairs of the OSCE MinskGroup – Russia, France, and the U.S. – are
currently holding the peace negotiations.
Armenia has not yet implemented the U.N. Security Council’s four
resolutions on the liberation of Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding
regions.