As a G-20 member, brotherly Turkey has been making huge contribution to the global development in recent years thanks to its growing influence on the international arena, President Aliyev said.
The head of state pointed out that about ten meetings of ministers of foreign affairs, culture, tourism, education, labor and other ministers of the OIC member states have been held in Baku in recent years.
“I highly appreciate the OIC’s activities towards mutual support and solidarity,” said the president.
“Islamophobia today is one of the serious threats in the world. We strongly condemn this tendency,” the head of state said. “As a matter of fact, Islam is a religion of peace, mercifulness, tolerance, and justice.”
He said equating Islam with terror is a wrong and a biased approach because suffering hardest from terror are Muslim countries anyway.
President Ilham Aliyev also spoke about the Armenian-Azerbaijani Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.
The head of state said Armenia has been pursuing an aggressive policy against Azerbaijan for more than two decades, in the wake of which the enemy occupied Azerbaijan’s 20 percent territory—Nagorno-Karabakh and seven surrounding districts—and carried out acts of ethnic cleansing in those territories, forcing over a million of Azerbaijanis to flee their homes to become refugees and IDPs.
President Aliyev recalled the Khojaly genocide committed by Armenians.
The head of state said the international community and international organizations recognizes Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity and supports a fair solution to the conflict in accordance with the norms of international law.
“The UN Security Council adopted four resolutions on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict which demands immediate and unconditional withdrawal of Armenian armed forces from the occupied Azerbaijani territories,” the president mentioned. “Moreover, the Non-Aligned Movement, OSCE, PACE and other international organizations passed similar decisions and resolutions.”
President Aliyev expressed his gratitude to the OIC for fair resolutions supporting the settlement of the Armenian-Azerbaijani Nagorno-Karabakh conflict within Azerbaijan’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.
However, the invader – Armenia ignores these decisions and periodically resorts to armed provocations to undermine the negotiation process, the head of state added.
“Armenian armed forces committed another provocation in early April, which resulted in the deaths of Azerbaijani servicemen and civilians. The Azerbaijani army has suppressed the Armenian provocation,” President Aliyev said, thanking the OIC for the decision to establish a contact group on the level of foreign ministers in connection with the Armenian aggression against Azerbaijan.
Azerbaijan is constantly contributing to intercultural and interreligious dialogue, according to the head of state.
“The 7th Global Forum of the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations will be held in Baku in late April. Azerbaijan attaches great importance to solidarity between Islamic countries,” President Aliyev said. “Baku will host the Islamic Solidarity Games in 2017. On this occasion, I invite you all to Baku to watch these games. I believe this event will contribute to the strengthening of peace and solidarity in the Islamic world, he concluded.
The Nagorno-Karabakh conflict entered its modern phase when the Armenian SRR made territorial claims against the Azerbaijani SSR in 1988.
A fierce war broke out between Azerbaijan and Armenia over the Nagorno-Karabakh region of Azerbaijan. As a result of the war, Armenian armed forces occupied some 20 percent of Azerbaijani territory which includes Nagorno-Karabakh and seven adjacent districts (Lachin, Kalbajar, Aghdam, Fuzuli, Jabrayil, Gubadli and Zangilan), and over a million Azerbaijanis became refugees and internally displaced people.
The military operations finally came to an end when Azerbaijan and Armenia signed a ceasefire agreement in Bishkek in 1994.
Dealing with the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict is the OSCE Minsk Group, which was created after the meeting of the OSCE Ministerial Council in Helsinki on 24 March 1992. The Group’s members include Azerbaijan, Armenia, Russia, the United States, France, Poland, Germany, Turkey, Belarus, Finland and Sweden.
Besides, the OSCE Minsk Group has a co-chairmanship institution, comprised of Russian, US and French co-chairs, which began operating in 1996.
Resolutions 822, 853, 874 and 884 of the UN Security Council, which were passed in short intervals in 1993, and other resolutions passed by the UN General Assembly, PACE, OSCE, OIC, and other organizations require Armenia to unconditionally withdraw its troops from Nagorno-Karabakh.
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