The Azerbaijani party, despite agreeing to the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) Minsk Group co-chairs’ proposals regarding the introduction of mechanisms to investigate incidents, has once again posited conditions.
Accordingly, Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov told AZERTAC, the Azerbaijan state news agency, that these mechanisms are not an objective, but rather just one of the measures aimed at achieving a comprehensive settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.
As per the Azerbaijani FM, the incidents are occurring “because Armenia’s armed forces are unlawfully present in Azerbaijan’s occupied territories.”
Mammadyarov stated that when these forces are withdrawn from his country’s “occupied territories,” the said incidents will not happen, and therefore there will be no need to investigate them.
To note, however, most of these incidents occur along the Armenian-Azerbaijani border, and thus, the Azerbaijani attempts to link these incidents to the matter of “occupation” will not succeed.
