The Nagorno-Karabakh Issue is Not Azerbaijan's Internal Matter, Marukyan

Edmon Marukyan, Armenia's special ambassador, has addressed the recent statements made by Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev:  ‘Azerbaijan's President Ilham Aliyev continues to insist that the Nagorno-Karabakh issue is an internal matter and that they do not intend to discuss it with anyone. First, I would like to remind once again that the three permanent members of the UN Security Council have not dealt with internal issues. I mean that the co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group - Russia, the USA, and France - have been negotiating this matter for decades, and now the EU is also involved. Therefore, the Nagorno-Karabakh issue is not Azerbaijan's internal matter.  Secondly, fundamental human rights and freedoms have not been considered internal matters for more than 70 years since World War II, as the international community learned lessons from the devastating global war, and no dictator or democratically elected leader should be allowed to commit massive human rights violations. In this case, the people of Nagorno-Karabakh are facing the danger of ethnic cleansing.  Thus, the international community must continue its efforts towards a peaceful resolution and the establishment of an international mechanism between official representatives of Azerbaijan and Nagorno-Karabakh to guarantee the rights and security of the Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh,’ Marukyan wrote on his Twitter microblog.