Council of Europe rejects illegal elections held in occupied Nagorno-Karabakh

By Azernews

By Akbar Mammadov

The Council of Europe has reiterated its support for Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity and rejected so-called "elections" held in Azerbaijan's Armenian-occupied Nagorno-Karabakh region on April 14.

“The Council of Europe has, on numerous occasions, reiterated its full commitment to the respect of the principle of territorial integrity and sovereignty of all its member states, including Azerbaijan, as outlined in relevant decisions and documents of the Committee of Ministers and the Parliamentary Assembly,” the Directorate of Communications of the Council of Europe told Azerbaijan’s Report news agency on April 20.

“It is the principled and well-known position of the Council of Europe that any elections held in contradiction or outside of the constitutional order of a member state have no legal effects and should not be recognized/considered as such. The same holds concerning the recent so-called elections held in Nagorno-Karabakh,” the communications director said.

Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry's Spokeswoman Leyla Abdullayeva published the CoE official’s statement on her Twitter account on April 20.

It should be noted that the illegal elections held in Nagorno-Karabakh region in two rounds on March 31 and April 14 have condemned by a number of international organizations such as the European Union, NATO, OIC, GUAM, the OSCE Minsk Group that mediates the conflict as well as a number of countries, including the UK, Germany, Turkey, Italy, Georgia, Ukraine, Estonia, etc.

Nagorno-Karabakh is Azerbaijan's breakaway region, which along with seven adjacent regions was occupied by Armenian forces in a war in the early 1990s. More than 20,000 Azerbaijanis were killed and around one million were displaced as a result of the large-scale hostilities.

The OSCE Minsk Group co-chaired by the United States, Russia and France has been mediating the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict since the signing of the volatile cease-fire agreement in 1994. The Minsk Group’s efforts have resulted in no progress and to this date, Armenia has failed to abide by the UN Security Council resolutions (822, 853, 874 and 884) that demand the withdrawal of Armenian military forces from the occupied territories of Azerbaijan.