1 Mar 2019 18:07

Baku calls on co-chairs of OSCE Minsk Group to influence Yerevan in regard of plans to resettle Armenians to Nagorno-Karabakh

BAKU. March 1 (Interfax) - Azerbaijan will raise the issue of Armenia's "settlement program" for Nagorno-Karabakh with the UN and the OSCE, the republic's Foreign Ministry press secretary Leyla Abdullayeva said.

Artur Vanetsyan, director of the Armenian National Security Service, said on Monday Armenia rules out the possibility of transferring territories to Azerbaijan in Karabakh settlement. "The settlement program, according to my subjective opinion, will become the main security guarantee to our country," he said at a meeting in Stepanakert attended by Bako Saakyan, president of the self-proclaimed Nagorno-Karabakh Republic.

"Azerbaijan, for its part, will raise this issue in the leading international organizations, including the UN, the OSCE, etc. At the same time, we are calling on the co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group to make a strong statement generally condemning such steps by representatives of the top political administration of Armenia," Abdullayeva told Interfax.

The statement by Vanetsyan is a clear attack against the negotiation process, which has lasted for many years under the aegis of the co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group, and it contradicts its essence and logic, in particular, in the light of the results achieved in the most recent meeting between the foreign ministers of Azerbaijan and Armenia in Paris," she said.

"Essentially, it's a clear attempt to sabotage the negotiation process and challenge the mediators' activities," she said.

Armenia is responsible for all possible negative consequences of such provocational statements," Abdullayeva said.

Azerbaijan does not consider the self-proclaimed Nagorno-Karabakh Republic a party to the conflict and refuses to negotiate with it.