Baku, October 15 (AZERTAC). “Disregarding international law, Armenia is far from engaging in a constructive search for peace in the region,” said Permenent representative of Azerbaijan to UN Agshin Mehdiyev in his letter posted on the UN Information Office.

“The impermissibly aggressive tone of the statement of President Serzh Sargsyan of the Republic of Armenia on 23 September at the general debate of the sixty-sixth session of the United Nations General Assembly testifies to Armenia’s apparent disregard of its obligations under the Charter of the United Nations and international law and also demonstrates how the leadership of this Member State is far from engaging in a constructive search for peace in the region,” says Letter dated 28 September 2011 from Agshin Mehdiyev addressed to the President of the General Assembly statement made by the President of Armenia in the general debate on 23 September 2011.

“It is curious that the President of Armenia — the country which bears primary responsibility for unleashing the war and perpetrating aggression against Azerbaijan, carrying out ethnic cleansing on a massive scale, committing other heinous crimes during the conflict and advocating undisguised racist ideology — attempts to criticize neighbouring countries and lecture them on issues pertaining to such notions as peace, human rights, negotiations and conflict resolution”

Mehdiyev stated It is obvious that such a futile effort of the head of the Armenian State easily collapses like a house of cards against the background of facts that testify to a diametrically opposite situation, and it makes no sense at all for Azerbaijan to disseminate “false accusations” against Armenia and the illegal separatist regime established by it in the occupied territories of Azerbaijan, as the President of Armenia asserts.

“The President of Armenia must be well aware that what he considers “the exercise of the right to self-determination” by the Armenian ethnic minority group living in Azerbaijan has been unequivocally qualified by the United Nations Security Council and the General Assembly, as well as by other authoritative international organizations, as the illegal use of force against the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Azerbaijan and other egregious violations of the Charter of the United Nations and international law. The illegality of the separatist entity and its structures, established by Armenia on the occupied territory of Azerbaijan, has been repeatedly stated at the international level in the most unambiguous manner.”

According to Mehdiyev, In an attempt to support his unconvincing arguments that secession is nevertheless possible and that it is dependent upon force and the situation that results, President Sargsyan makes specific reference to the recent admission of the Republic of South Sudan to the United Nations. However, it seems that only the President of Armenia is unaware that, in contrast to the situation of illegality created by the aggression of Armenia against Azerbaijan and its consequences, the independence of the Republic of South Sudan has been achieved on the basis of the consent of the parties concerned and in accordance with the Comprehensive Peace Agreement concluded between them. Anticipating misinterpretations in this regard, the Security Council, in a statement issued by its president on 9 February 2011, made it clear that “the process mandated by the Comprehensive Peace Agreement represents an exceptional case and does not by itself set a precedent”.

“Speculations on the fictitious “rise in manifestations of armenophobia” in Azerbaijan are also ridiculous and beneath all criticism. President Sargsyan disregards the simple fact that, unlike Armenia, which has implemented the total ethnic cleansing of both its own territory and the occupied territories of Azerbaijan of all non-Armenians and thus succeeded in creating a uniquely monoethnic culture in those areas, Azerbaijan has preserved its ethnic and cultural diversity to the present day. Moreover, high-ranking Armenian officials regularly make statements that openly promote ethnically and religiously motivated hatred and intolerance. Among numerous examples, the following revelations of the former and current Presidents of Armenia represent the most telling illustrations of the odious ideas of ethnic differentiation and racial superiority laid down in the State policy of Armenia.

Thus, the public comments made in 2003 by the previous President of Armenia, Robert Kocharyan, about “ethnic incompatibility between Armenians and Azerbaijanis” have produced justifiable indignation within the international community. The then Secretary-General of the Council of Europe, Walter Schwimmer, said that “Kocharyan’s comment was tantamount to warmongering” and a manifestation of “bellicose and hate rhetoric”, while the then President of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, Peter Schieder, stated that “since its creation, the Council of Europe has never heard the phrase ‘ethnic incompatibility. On 16 October 2010, at a meeting with journalists from the Armenian diaspora, President Sargsyan, referring to the results of some “genetic” study, stated that “as a nation, Armenia has been around for the last 8,000 years”. Apart from being based on evident historic falsifications, these words were uttered in the direct context of the speaker’s vision of the superiority of the Armenians over other nations, including the Azerbaijanis, who were characterized by the head of the Armenian State as a “Turkic Muslim nomadic tribe”. It seems the President of Armenia has forgotten what dire consequences the world has suffered in the past as a result of such “genetic studies”. On 25 July 2011, in a meeting with the youth of his country, the President of Armenia gave instructions to continue the implementation of the policy of hatred and mistrust among the peoples of the region. Thus, in response to the question of a student about the perspectives of expanding Armenia’s territory at the expense of neighbouring Turkey, Serzh Sargsyan said that the realization of this duty would depend on the efforts of the new generation and referred as an example to the fulfilment of the task of capturing a part of what he called “our fatherland — Karabakh”. In other words, instead of preparing its people for peace and a prosperous and stable future in friendship and cooperation with neighbouring nations, the President of Armenia openly incites the youth and future generations of his country to new wars and violence. This message of the President of Armenia should be undoubtedly interpreted as a response to the joint statement of 26 May 2011 made in Deauville, France, by the Presidents of France, the Russian Federation and the United States of America — the countries co-chairing the Minsk Group of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe — in which, inter alia, they strongly urged the sides to prepare their populations for peace, not war,” the letter says.

“Thus, shortly after the assertion of claims on the Daghlyq Garabagh (Nagorno Karabakh) region of Azerbaijan at the end of the 1980s, under instructions from and with the blessing of the Armenian authorities, the more than 230,000 Azerbaijanis remaining were forcibly deported from Armenia. This process was accompanied by killings, torture, enforced disappearances, the destruction of property and pillaging throughout Armenia. These acts were conducted on a widespread and systematic basis. In all, 216 Azerbaijanis were killed in Armenia in 1987-1989, including children, women and elderly people”

“In February 1992, the town of Khojaly in the Daghlyq Garabagh region of Azerbaijan was notoriously overrun and its civilian population and defenders were subjected to an unprecedented massacre. The attack and capture of the town involved the extermination of hundreds of Azerbaijanis. Atrocities by Armenian troops included scalping, beheading, bayoneting of pregnant women and mutilation of bodies. Even children were not spared. The facts confirm that the intentional slaughter of the Khojaly town civilians and defenders was directed to their mass extermination only because they were Azerbaijanis.

It should be particularly noted in this regard that the events in Khojaly took place in a period when the current President of Armenia served as head of the illegal separatist regime’s “Self-Defence Forces Committee” and, accordingly, was one of those responsible for the forcible capture of the town. Moreover, Serzh Sargsyan himself and other direct participants in the crime, without any feeling of remorse, unequivocally admitted in public their culpability for the extermination of the inhabitants and defenders of Khojaly”.

“We have no doubt that the crime in Khojaly, along with other atrocities committed in the course of the aggression of Armenia against Azerbaijan, entails the former’s State responsibility under international law and the individual criminal responsibility of those who participated in said acts and their accomplices and accessories. The Republic of Azerbaijan proceeds from the strong understanding that there can be no long-term and sustainable peace without justice and that ending impunity for the most serious international crimes is essential not only for the purposes of individual criminal responsibility, but also for peace, truth, reconciliation and the rights of the victims. The statement of the President of Armenia has not become an exception from the usual speculations and misinterpretations by high-ranking Armenian officials as to the true value and content of the conflict settlement process and mediation efforts.”

“The Government of the Republic of Azerbaijan considers the defiant rhetoric of the Armenian leadership as having the sole purpose of discrediting the ongoing conflict settlement process, misleading the international community and drawing its own public’s attention away from the country’s aggravating internal problems,” the letter concluded.