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Ambassador Agshin Mehdiyev: â€œInstead of admitting the self-evident truth and thus ridding themselves of the need to endlessly distort reality, Armenian officials continue to seek justification for their own crimesâ€

24 September 2011 10:54 (UTC +04:00)

â€œIt should be noted that the letters from the Permanent Mission of Armenia addressed to the Secretary-General, the principal organs of which condemned the use of force to occupy the territory of Azerbaijan and demanded immediate, full and unconditional withdrawal of the Armenian occupying forces from all the occupied territories of Azerbaijanâ€, Amb. Mehdiyev said in his letter to the Secretary-General.

â€œIt is therefore curious that, instead of admitting the self-evident truth and thus ridding themselves of the need to endlessly distort reality, Armenian officials continue to seek justification for their own crimes in attempts to discredit Azerbaijanâ€, the Ambassador mentioned.

â€œHowever, such awkward fabrication easily collapses like a house of cards against the background of facts that testify to a diametrically opposite situation, and it makes no sense at all for Azerbaijan to launch â€œpropagandistic warâ€ against Armenia, as the latterâ€™s Permanent Mission groundlessly assertsâ€, he added.

â€œArmenian nationalistic circles have resorted to dangerous provocations, methods of violence and the use of force many times in the past to please the policy of territorial expansionism, thus paving the way for devastating wars and countless human sufferings. By making a series of historical assertions to substantiate this policy, Armenia confirms in reality that its territorial claims towards and military actions against Azerbaijan were aimed from the very beginning at seizing the territories by means of force and changing fundamentally their demographic compositionâ€, he pointed out adding, that it is well established that the full-scale war between the two countries was preceded by a number of illegal declarations and decisions taken with a view to securing the unilateral secession of Nagorno-Karabakh from Azerbaijan, by attacks at the end of 1987 and the beginning of 1988 on the Azerbaijanis, both in that territory and in Armenia, resulting in civilian casualties and a flood of Azerbaijani refugees and internally displaced persons and, finally, by incursion of Armenian regular armed forces, mercenary units and terrorist bands into the territory of Azerbaijanâ€.

The Ambassador further on noticed that the documentary evidence proves, and the UN and other international organizations confirm, that Armenia unleashed the war to realize its annexationist aspirations; attacked Azerbaijan and occupied its territories, including the NK region and seven adjacent districts; carried out ethnic cleansing on a massive scale; committed other heinous crimes in the course of the war; and established an ethnically constructed subordinate separatist entity on the captured Azerbaijani territory.

â€œWe have repeatedly stated, and I would like to point out once again that, as a country suffering from the occupation of its territories and the forcible displacement of hundreds of thousands of its citizens, Azerbaijan is the most interested party in the earliest negotiated settlement of the conflict and the removal of its consequences. On the contrary, taking advantage of the favorable results of military actions, Armenia is trying to consolidate the current status quo of the occupation and impose, finally, a fait accompli situation. In this connection, Armenia considers the conflict settlement process only as a means of achieving the annexation of Azerbaijani territories that it has captured through military force and in which it has carried out ethnic cleansingâ€, he mentioned.

â€œIntensified attacks over the last months on Azerbaijani civilians and civilian objects across the front line, and an unprecedented increase of hostile statements by high-ranking officials in Yerevan, full of historical falsifications and factual distortions as to the root causes of the war and conflict settlement process, confirm the validity of serious concern over the destabilizing effect of Armeniaâ€™s policy and represent a direct threat to peace, security and stability in the region. The most recent statements by President Serzh Sargsyan of Armenia are self-explanatory and illustrative as to how the leadership of this country is far from perceiving the generally accepted norms and principles of civilized behaviour, which are indispensable for the peaceful and prosperous future of our peoplesâ€.

In his letter Amb. Mehdiyev draws the SCâ€™s attention to ongoing violations of the ceasefire by the armed forces of Armenia, recorded for the month of August. As a result of these violations, during this period a lieutenant of the armed forces of the Republic of Azerbaijan was seriously wounded.