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Arif Mammadov: â€œArmenia attempts to violate the international legal norms in the process concerning the Khankendi airportâ€

07 August 2012 14:33 (UTC +04:00)

Baku. Parvin Abbasov â€“ APA. â€œIndeed Armenia attempts to violate the international legal norms in the process concerning the Khankendi airportâ€, director of the State Civil Aviation Administration Arif Mammadov said in his interview to YAPâ€™s website, APA reports.

According to him, in a recent statement, the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs expressed their opinions on the Khankendi airport: â€œAzerbaijanâ€™s state officials, politicians also expressed opinion on this statement. The common opinion is that the co-chairs are not able to solve this issue. The opinions of the co-chairs on this problem is enough contradictory and illogical in some moments. They say that activity of the Khankendi airport must not be politicized. This is wrong approach. In general, activity of this airport is impossible. Namely the airport canâ€™t function by itself. If the plane gets off the ground, it must land in another airport and use the air space for it. The air space belongs to Azerbaijanâ€.

Arif Mammadov said that Azerbaijan prohibited the use of above-mentioned airspace by civil airplanes: â€œWe canâ€™t control it and nobody can guarantee the security of flights. Thatâ€™s why we declared the airport closed in accordance with the international air navigation rules. The International Civil Aviation Organization accepted our decision. If Armenians illegally enters to Azerbaijanâ€™s air space, it will be a violation of international rules. Azerbaijan declared that six international airports are functioning in its territory and if the plane gets off the ground from another place, it will be considered as violation of our air spaceâ€.