Azerbaijani Ambassador to Mexico Mammad Talibov wants the world to know one simple fact: Nagorno-Karabakh is not a disputed territory, according to the article by the Mexican newspaper Pulse News Mexico.
"Nagorno-Karabakh is recognized by the United Nations and most of the world as a legitimate part of Azerbaijani national territory," Talibov said in a zoom press conference on Monday. "It is an occupied territory, taken by force by the Armenian military more than three decades ago."
Talibov went on to note that following that invasion, the United Nations Security Council adopted four separated resolutions in 1993 condemning the slaughter and expulsion of the Azerbaijanis from their legal homeland and demanding the immediate, complete and unconditional withdrawal of its occupying forces from the region, resolutions that Armenia has steadfastly refused to comply with.
"But the Armenians are trying to manipulate the international media and community by using the term ‘disputed territory’," he said.
"Karabakh and the surrounding regions of Azerbaijan that are held by Armenia are recognized by the United Nations and international law as Azerbaijani territory," the diplomat said, adding that as a consequence of the occupation, the ambassador said, about 20% of his country is under Armenian rule and more than 1 million Azerbaijani citizens have been displacing.
"Armenia has consistently taken a nonconstructive stance. They want to maintain the status quo, that is, the occupation of our land," Talibov added.
Consequently, despite constant efforts by Baku to coax the Armenians out of its territory, the situation has remained in a decades-long impasse, with occasional flair-ups of fighting sparked by both sides. But all that changed two years ago, Talibov said, when Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan came to power and decided to adopt a more aggressive approach to Armenia’s relationship with Azerbaijan.
"Pashinyan simply started calling Karabakh and the surrounding Azerbaijani territories as Armenian territories, thus destroying the negotiation process," the Azerbaijani Ambassador said.
The ambassador also noted that at no point in the fighting has Azerbaijan launched attacks outside of its own internationally recognized territory, but after the September escalation this year, Armenian forces launched SCUD ballistic missile attacks into regions of Azerbaijan that were outside the conflict area, including in the country’s second-largest city, Ganja, and other heavily populated urban areas, killing numerous civilians.
"The Armenians want the world to believe that this is an ethnic conflict and that they are defending land that is theirs. But that is not true. They are trying to hold on to land that they have occupied illegally for more than three decades, and they were trying to expand their occupation even further. We will not let them do that," Talibov concluded.
