Azerbaijan to appeal to UNESCO on illegal archaeological work in occupied lands

Azerbaijan will once again raise in UNESCO the issue of violation of international law by foreign nationals engaged in illegal archaeological activity in Azerbaijan’s territories occupied by Armenia, Foreign Ministry Spokesman Hikmat Hajiyev told Trend.

He said Yolanda Fernandez Jalvo, a researcher at the Spanish National Museum of Natural Sciences, Tania King, director of Azokh Project of the Blandford Town Museum, UK, and Peter Andrews, a researcher at London’s Natural History Museum, have carried out excavations since 2002 in the Azykh cave located in Azerbaijan’s occupied territories.

“These persons by illegally crossing Azerbaijan’s state border are engaged in archaeological activity in the country’s territory, transport archaeological artifacts found in this area without declaring them at customs,” Hajiyev noted.

“The illegal actions of these persons are the violation of the territorial integrity and laws of Azerbaijan.”

“By their illegal activities, they also violated international law, international humanitarian law, including the UNESCO Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict,” Hajiyev added.

He also noted with regret that Spain’s National Museum of Natural Sciences and Ministry of Science and Technology, the UK’s NUI Galway University, and London Branch of Armenian General Benevolent Union didn’t take the necessary measures to prevent the illegal activity of their staff in Azerbaijan’s territory.

He added that Armenia impedes UNESCO from holding monitoring of Azerbaijan’s cultural and historical monuments in the occupied territories.

Levon Yepiskoposyan, a research fellow at the Institute of Molecular Biology of Armenia’s National Academy of Sciences, is one of the “leaders” of the illegal research in the Azykh cave, Hajiyev said.

“Azerbaijani Prosecutor General’s Office has initiated a criminal case against these persons, investigation is underway,” he noted.

The conflict between the two South Caucasus countries began in 1988 when Armenia made territorial claims against Azerbaijan. As a result of the ensuing war, in 1992 Armenian armed forces occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan, including the Nagorno-Karabakh region and seven surrounding districts.

The 1994 ceasefire agreement was followed by peace negotiations. Armenia has not yet implemented four UN Security Council resolutions on withdrawal of its armed forces from the Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding districts.