Azerbaijan warns Armenia over illegal visits to Nagorno-Karabakh

By Azernews

By Vafa Ismayilova

Baku has warned Yerevan over Armenian officials' illegal visits to Azerbaijani territories and described such visits as unacceptable, Azertag reported on January 14.

"We once again state that Armenian statesmen's visits to Azerbaijani territories are unacceptable," the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry press service was quoted as saying.

The ministry stressed that similar visits could cost Armenia dearly. 

"If the Armenian foreign minister once again visits Azerbaijani territories without Baku's permission, this may cost Armenia dearly. As for the Armenian foreign minister's unfounded claim about the status of Azerbaijan's Nagorno-Karabakh region, we would like to remind the Armenian officials that President Ilham Aliyev has sent the status issue to the dustbin of history," the ministry said.

As part of his visit to Nagorno-Karabakh on January 5, Armenian Foreign Minister Ara Ayvazian met separatist representatives of the self-styled entity in the region. On January 6, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev urged an end to such visits, stressing that Armenia will regret even more if such provocative steps are further taken.

In his address to the nation immediately after signing the trilateral peace deal on November 10, 2020, President Aliyev stressed that the signed document contained not a single word about the status of Nagorno-Karabakh.

“You probably noticed that this statement contains not a single word about the status of Nagorno-Karabakh!... The status went to hell, it failed, it was scattered to smithereens, it is not and will not be there. As long as I am President, there will be no status,” Aliyev said.

Nagorno-Karabakh is Azerbaijan's breakaway region that along with seven adjacent regions came under Armenian occupation in a war in the early 1990s. For around three decades, Armenia refused to implement the UN resolutions on the withdrawal of its troops from Azerbaijan's internationally-recognized territories.

The six-week-war between the two countries resumed on September 27, 2010 and ended with the liberation of Azerbaijan's territories in and around Nagorno-Karabakh. 

Baku, Moscow and Yerevan signed on November 10 the peace deal that brought an end to the war. The signed agreement obliged Armenia to withdraw its troops from the Azerbaijani lands that it has occupied since the early 1990s.