YEREVAN. – Baku is periodically attempting to give a religious connotation to the Karabakh-Azerbaijani conflict. 

The Foreign Minister of the Republic of Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh Republic/NKR), Karen Mirzoyan, on Monday said the aforementioned along the lines of the 6th Armenia-Diaspora Pan-Armenian Conference that got underway in Armenia’s capital city of Yerevan.

The Artsakh FM noted that the exploitation of the Islamic factor is distressing, especially in the context of the present-day situation in the Middle East.

“Today, numerous Azerbaijanis are fighting in the ranks of the Islamic State terrorist group,” Mirzoyan noted. “And Azerbaijan is supplying illegal weapons to terrorists.”

The FM added that the NKR has seen many ordeals and withstood with many challenges.

“Our main challenge [today] is the conflict between Karabakh and Azerbaijan,” Mirzoyan stressed. “We [Artsakh] have repeatedly stated that the conflict can be resolved based on the international precepts; first of all, on the people’s right to self-determination.”

In his words, however, since Azerbaijan has started an arms race, great attention should be paid to the modernization of the Artsakh army.

“The [respective] steps that were taken have already enabled to improve the situation,” said Mirzoyan.

But the NKR FM stressed that in actual fact, the Karabakh conflict is neither a religious nor a territorial conflict.

“First of all, it’s a conflict of two different civilizations,” he explained. “On the one hand, the Karabakh and Armenian [civilization], which is based on respect for human rights, whereas on the other hand, the Azerbaijani [civilization], which is based on persecutions, use of force in foreign policy.”