Chair of the Milli Majlis Sahiba Gafarova met on 12 April with the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of North Macedonia and OSCE Chairman-in-Office Bujar Osmani who is currently visiting in Azerbaijan.

Mrs Gafarova remarked to Mr Osmani that he had been familiarised with the situation in our region at his meetings with President Ilham Aliyev and the Azerbaijani counterpart Jeyhun Bayramov earlier today. The conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan is over, with our region having embarked on a new stage, that of post-conflict restoration, rearrangement and reintegration, according to Mrs Gafarova. In particular, Azerbaijan resolved the former conflict and restored her territorial integrity relying on her own devices and, furthermore, has invited Armenia to sign a peace treaty on the basis of the five principles of the international law in order to eliminate the conflict’s aftermath. But Armenia remains destructive at the negotiations, confuses the international community with false proclamations and violates flagrantly the paragraphs of the trilateral statement of 10 November 2020 that drew a line under the erstwhile antagonism. Yesterday, Armenia committed another borderline provocation as another vivid token of the true Armenian stances; three Azerbaijani military servicemen lost their lives consequently.

We hope, though, that Armenia will stop such acts but will show political will and take real steps towards signing a peace pact between the two states.

Azerbaijan is working on political, social and economic reintegration of her Armenian citizens living in the Azerbaijan region of Garabagh, stressed the Chair of the Milli Majlis. Those people will have the same rights and freedoms as all the other Azerbaijani citizens and the Constitution of the Republic of Azerbaijan is a solid legal guarantee of that.

Member of the Azerbaijani parliament Ramin Mammadov has been designated as the contact person for the ethnic Armenians resident in our country. His first meeting with them took place on 1 March 2023; this process will continue.

Azerbaijan has been implementing large-scale restoration projects for her de-occupied lands within the frameworks of the Great Return Programme ever since the end of Garabagh War II in November 2020. All the former displaced people will return to their homes; in fact, this relocation has begun already. However, those more than a million mines that Armenia had planted are a great hurdle to jump over in the course of the extensive restoration and re-building work. More than 300 Azerbaijani civilians and military personnel have died in mine explosions to date. Incidentally, Azerbaijan expects the OSCE to play a certain part in the post-conflict restoration and re-building programme, according to Mrs Gafarova.

It is to be hoped that the OSCE will lend a hand with capacity-building projects focused on the Azerbaijan National Agency for Mine Action (ANAMA) and will also help bring the former IDP to their homelands. All that is an opportunity for the OSCE to become a part of the strengthening of regional peace, in which context the Azerbaijani side also counts on the support from North Macedonia as the OSCE Chair.

The Azerbaijani delegation are actively involved in the work of the OSCE Parliamentary Delegation. Moreover, Baku hosted an annual session of the OSCE PA and there is positive co-operation between the Azerbaijani and North Macedonian delegations in the OSCE, Sahiba Gafarova continued.

Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of North Macedonia and OSCE Chairman-in-Office Bujar Osmani thanked for the meeting and shared his impressions from today’s conversations with President Ilham Aliyev and Minister of Foreign Affairs Jeyhun Bayramov. Such trips as this one let one look over the relations once more and take the existing reality in better, according to Mr Osmani.

North Macedonia, a country where diverse ethnic communities live together, is richly experienced in post-conflict peace arrangements and stands ready to share such experience, the OSCE Chairman-in-Office pointed out.

As the conversation went on, the guest voiced his thoughts about advancing the political dialogue and peace promotion in the region as well as his vision of the future and other ideas. He also said what the OSCE could do to those ends.

There was also an exchange of opinions about other matters of interest to both sides at the meeting.

The Press and Public Relations Department
The Milli Majlis