Lithuania backs Azerbaijan in Nagorno-Karabakh conflict

/By AzerNews/

By Sara Rajabova

Lithuania has voiced support to the fair position of Azerbaijan in the Armenian-Azerbaijani Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

Andrius Krivas, deputy Lithuania’s foreign minister announced about this at a meeting with his Azerbaijani counterpart Khalaf Khalafov during political consultations between Azerbaijan and Lithuania on May 15, Azerbaijan’s foreign ministry reported.

Krivas said trade and economic activities in Azerbaijan’s occupied territories should be based on the principle of territorial integrity of Azerbaijan.

He further noted that Lithuania attaches importance to its relations with Azerbaijan, adding that for the last 20 years these relations have acquired an intensified character.

In turn, Khalafov expressed Azerbaijan's interest in developing cooperation with Lithuania in all spheres.

He noted how he highly appreciated Lithuania's position on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, which emerged in 1988 over Armenia’s unfounded territorial claims against Azerbaijan.

The settlement of the conflict is possible only based on the liberation of all of Azerbaijan’s occupied territories, Azerbaijani official said.

Khalafov also said the EU should express a clear stance on the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict based on Azerbaijan's territorial integrity.

Armenia occupied over 20 percent of Azerbaijan's internationally recognized territory, including Nagorno-Karabakh and seven adjacent regions, after laying territorial claims against its South Caucasus neighbor. This led to a brutal war in the early 1990s. Long-standing efforts by U.S, Russian and French mediators have been largely fruitless so far.

As a result of Armenia military aggression, over 20,000 Azerbaijanis were killed, 4,866 were reported missing and almost 100,000 were injured, while 50,000 were disabled.

The UN Security Council has passed four resolutions calling for Armenia to withdraw from Azerbaijani territory, but Yerevan has yet to comply.