Chair of the Milli Majlis Sahiba Gafarova who is in Athens, Greece on a working visit currently met with President of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly Margareta Cederfelt on 21 October.

The President of the OSCE PA at whose request the meeting took place greeted the Chair of the Milli Majlis and told her about the work done by the Assembly. Not many live meetings and contacts occur due to the pandemic, Mrs Cederfelt remarked; but she said she hoped that such encounters would become more frequent after the hazard of the pandemic was eliminated. The OSCE PA attaches a foremost importance to co-operating with Azerbaijan, according to Margareta Cederfelt who also mentioned the significance of maintaining peace and security in the region.

Chair of the Milli Majlis Sahiba Gafarova, in turn, told Mrs Cederfelt about the work that Azerbaijan does in the Assembly and about the Azerbaijani delegation being invariably active in all the OSCE PA arrangements and events.

Madame Speaker then talked about the beginning of a new stage in the region after Azerbaijan’s historic victory in the 44-day Patriotic War. She pointed out to her vis-à-vis the fact that Azerbaijan had freed its lands after thirty years of the Armenian occupation going on to making the Azerbaijani national territory whole again and enforcing independently the resolutions of the UN Security Council that demanded the immediate, unconditional and complete withdrawal of the invading troops from the territory of Azerbaijan. The conflict ceased to exist with the presidents of Russia and Azerbaijan and the prime minister of Armenia signing the trilateral statement – the Highland Garabagh Conflict is left in the past. Saying this, the Chair of the Milli Majlis called against statements and references to ‘Nagorno Karabakh’ as unacceptable ones.

Whereas Azerbaijan has fulfilled all its obligations under the trilateral statement, the on-going provocations of the Armenian side hinder a sustainable peace in the region. A year has passed since the trilateral statement was signed on 10 November and yet Armenia has not released the minefield maps. What few charts Armenia did provide have the accuracy of merely 25 per cent. As many as 150 Azerbaijani civilians and military have been either killed or mauled by the explosions of the mines planted by Armenia to date.

The boundaries of the economic regions of Azerbaijan were redrawn pursuant to the July 2020 decree of the president of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev; the two new economic regions of Garabagh and Eastern Zangazur were created simultaneously. Our country has initiated the large-scale restoration work in its territories cleaned of the invaders, according to the Chair of the Milli Majlis.

Azerbaijan wants peace and well-being in the region; President Ilham Aliyev, too, stated his readiness for negotiations about delimitation of the borders and signing a peace treaty on condition that the two countries recognise each other’s territorial integrity, according to Sahiba Gafarova.

Azerbaijan is a multinational country with more than ninety ethnic groups, with representatives of various peoples and nations living in it. The customs and traditions of all the nations are respected here. There are no xenophobia and intolerance in this country; the national and confessional tolerance makes one of the priority segments of the state policy of Azerbaijan, Mrs Gafarova was saying.

As she was handing the President of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly with the book entitled ‘Garabagh Before and After the Occupation’, Chair of the Milli Majlis Sahiba Gafarova told her that Armenia had completely looted and destroyed our towns, villages, infrastructure, cultural and historical legacy and religious centres in the thirty years in which the lands that had hosted them had been held in the Armenian captivity.

Other matters of interest to both parties were talked over during the conversation as well.

The Press and Public Relations Department

The Milli Majlis