Foreign

Home page

Foreign

Elkhan Suleymanov delivers speech on blockade of Nakhchivan and humanitarian catastrophe of Sarsang reservoir at PACE Monitoring Committeeâ€™s meeting

28 February 2014 15:34 (UTC +04:00)

Baku – APA. On February 27-28, 2014, meeting of PACE Monitoring Committee was held in Malta. Elkhan Suleymanov, member of Azerbaijani Delegation to PACE, delivered a speech regarding blockade of Nakhchivan, humanitarian catastrophe of Sarsang reservoir, and its economic, environmental, and biological consequences during the meeting, APA reports. Member of Parliament stated:

“Autonomous Republic of Nakhchivan is an Azeri exclave, on the border of Iran, with some 410.000 Azeri inhabitants and is blocked by Armenia since almost 25 years. Population of Nakhchivan, whose rights were violated, was subject to great torture, and economic and social situation in the region still remains hard.

Armenia threatens to annex this Azeri territory, after having occupied illegally already 20% of other Azeri territories. Given these continuous threats on Nakhchivan and its citizens, one easily understands that daily living in such menaced enclave is under high pressure.

Interestingly, the blockade of Nakhchivan was never the subject of any hearings, discussions or adopted documents in any international organizations, including PACE for 25 years.

Let’s first of all eliminate this lethal blockade. But nobody wants to do this. But nobody wants to hear it. If the Council of Europe wants to accelerate the development of democracy, it should tell its final word in order to first of all end this occupation.”

Then, Elkhan Suleymanov informed members about humanitarian catastrophe of Sarsang reservoir. He told that Sarsang reservoir is situated at 726 meters above sea level (with dam of 125 meters high and capacity of 560 million cubic meters) and was built on the Tartar River in 1976. The reservoir is under Armenian occupation since 1992, and is in emergency situation due to lack of maintenance for over 20 years. It poses serious danger to the lives of 400,000 people of 7 provinces of Azerbaijan and has economic, environmental, and biological consequences in the region. Currently, the population of the region faces serious humanitarian catastrophe. Elkhan Suleymanov called to focus the attention of international community on the necessity to eliminate this humanitarian catastrophe and particularly underlined that today besides about one million refugees forcefully displaced from the occupied Azerbaijani territories, 410 thousand people of Nakhchivan, as well as 450 thousand people, who are under danger of Sarsang humanitarian catastrophe, thus, one million and 850 thousand Azerbaijani people have become the captive of occupation and blockade.

Finally, Elkhan Suleymanov urged to get lesson from developments in Ukraine, and told that the Council of Europe should not turn blind eye to the occupation and should adopt definite decisions on the occupation and blockade of Azerbaijani territories.

A number of European MPs supported the issues raised by Elkhan Suleymanov, showing solidarity with him.

Following Elkhan Suleymanov’s speech, Monitoring Committee decided that co-rapporteurs on the two countries - Azerbaijan and Armenia should study the blockade of Nakhchivan and humanitarian situation of Sarsang reservoir, and include these issues in their reports. The CoE should keep these issues under permanent control.

Finally, Mr. Stefan Schennach, Chairman of Monitoring Committee stressed the importance of hearings on the blockade of Nakhchivan in the Council of Europe.