Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry about illegal activities of occupants in Karabakh

The Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry has presented a report titled ‘Illegal economic and other activities on the occupied territories of Azerbaijan’. The ministry noted that the report had been prepared on the basis of more than 500 Armenian public resources.

"There are facts that illegal economic and other activities are carried out on the occupied Azerbaijani territories, and Armenia is responsible for organizing them," the spokesman of the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry, Hikmet Hajiyev, said.

He noted that the illegal economic activities in the occupied territories are mainly carried out by natives of Armenia who have close contacts with the Armenian diaspora. However, there are some foreign citizens who are involved in these activities for the purpose of making a profit. Secondly, transportation of goods, minerals and other natural resources to the international markets is carried out by Armenian transport nodes.

Azerbaijani Foreign Minister noted that such illicit economic activity could lead to a humanitarian catastrophe, as the "entrepreneurs" don't use the Sarsang water reservoir properly.

A separate chapter of the report is dedicated to instances of relocation of Syrian refugees to the occupied Azerbaijani territories.

"15-20 thousand Syrian refugees have been resettled in Armenia. We have information that hundreds of Syrian Armenian families of them were relocated to the occupied lands of Azerbaijan. But the Armenians still continue to hide these figures," Hikmet Hajiyev said, adding that this information was announced by Armenian sources.

The Azerbaijani authorities believe that such illegal activity on the occupied territories hinders the peaceful resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.