Researchers, academicians, journalists and other people who would like to visit Azerbaijan’s occupied territories for professional activities should abide by the laws of Azerbaijan, the head of Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry’s press service, Hikmet Hajiyev, said during an episode of the program ‘This Week in Focus’.
He added that Baku is very pragmatic and open on this issue. Hajiyev said that in order to visit Azerbaijan’s occupied territories, foreigners need to submit an appeal to Azerbaijan’s Foreign Ministry. According to him, recently representatives of the New York Times and a researcher from the UK were granted permission.
The spokesman of the Foreign Ministry complained that foreign journalists were not previously aware of the procedures needed to visit Azerbaijan’s occupied territories, due to that the Ministry raised awareness of the issue.
He also denied Armenia’s statements that it is making a profit from attracting foreigners to Nagorno-Karabakh. In this regard, Hikmet Hajiyev said that the majority of those people who illegally visit this region are citizens of Armenia. The second major group of visitors are members of the Armenian diaspora from other countries.
In addition, there are people, who were misled into thinking that they are visiting a part of Armenia. "And we have a lot of appeals from this group of people. They understand the situation, and express support for the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan. They respect the law of Azerbaijan and they ask to be removed from the list of the persons who are declared as undesirable in the republic," Trend cited him as saying.
The press secretary also stated that there has been a decrease in the number of people who illegally visit the occupied territories of Azerbaijan. In particular, last year only 60-70 people there illegally visited Nagorno-Karabakh.
A member of the Public Chamber of the Russian Federation, Sergey Markov, told Vestnik Kavkaza that a formal procedure for legal visits to the occupied Azerbaijani territories, agreed with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Azerbaijan, is not well enough known in the world, which explains the presence of a significant number of illegal trips to Karabakh through Armenia. "There is no clear understanding that it should be done, how it should be done and where you need to go," he said.
Also, he said, for the most part Karabakh is visited by those who do not consider it necessary to inform Azerbaijan about their time in the occupied territories. "As a rule, Armenian friends go to Nagorno-Karabakh and they certainly do not see any reason to ask permission from Baku. I think only neutral foreigners use legal ways, for example, someone from the Council of Europe," Markov said.
