Question: Today, the UN General Assembly voted on Azerbaijan’s initiative to include a resolution on “The Status of Occupied Territories in Azerbaijan” during the UN General Assembly 59th session. The initiative did in fact enter the agenda. What is your comment?

Answer: Yes, there was a vote today on whether to include the issue on the agenda and of the UN’s 191 member countries, only 43 countries voted in favor of Azerbaijan’s initiative. The remainder abstained. The Netherlands, on behalf of the European Union, spoke against Azerbaijan’s initiative, and France did as well, on behalf of the OSCE Minsk Group. The vote showed that this initiative does not enjoy the broad support of the international community.

The overwhelming majority of those who voted with Azerbaijan are members of the Organization of Islamic Countries, which is currently chaired by Turkey. This means that, unfortunately, Azerbaijan is attempting to give the conflict a different color by recruiting the Islamic countries and exploiting the prevailing solidarity within that organization. We believe such actions will definitely have a negative effect on the peace process. Nevertheless, I want to also stress that exactly 40% of the OIC membership did not succumb to Turkey’s and Azerbaijan’s pressure and did not support the Azerbaijani initiative.

I’d like to point out a few other important facts. No permanent members of the UN Security Council voted in favor of Azerbaijan’s initiative. Nor did any non-permanent members of the Security Council either, except for Pakistan. No European Union member country supported the initiative nor did any OSCE Minsk Group country with the exception of Turkey.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Armenia states one more time that through such steps Azerbaijan is attempting to divert the international community from the actual core of the NK conflict, which is the status of Nagorno Karabakh.

We have said and will repeat again that if Azerbaijan removes individual issues from the comprehensive discussion of Nagorno Karabakh’s status to attract or divert international attention, then they must negotiate those issues directly with Nagorno Karabakh.