USAN SENDS LETTER TO PRESIDENT OBAMA REGARDING NAGORNO-KARABAKH CONFLICT
Baku. 25 July (AZERTAC). In light of a flurry of activity regarding the peaceful settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict - a region of Azerbaijan occupied by Armenia - with statements and phone calls by President Obama, statements by the Presidents of Russia and France, OSCE Chairwoman-in-Office and OSCE Minsk Group co-chairmen, as well as aggressive and unhelpful rhetoric emanating from the radical Armenian groups in U.S. and abroad, the Board of Directors of the U.S. Azeris Network (USAN) has sent a letter to President Obama yesterday.
We present abriged version of the letter.
With foreign policy and relations with the world taking a center stage, particularly with the Eurasian region and Muslim world in special focus, we welcome your active engagement to settle the Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh (NK) conflict, to depoliticize the Armenian claims against Turkey, and to engage Turkey more in the Caucasus peace process, as well as increase trade, economic and other relations between the regional nations.
As Azerbaijani-Americans, we greatly appreciate your joint declaration with Presidents of France and Russia, your phone calls about NK conflict with President Aliyev and President Gul, the reinvigorated work of the OSCE Minsk Group of which U.S. is a co-chair, the more equitable and fair foreign assistance FY2010 requests in line with previous years requests. We urge you, Vice President Biden, Secretary Clinton and your Administration to step up such positive efforts in the future, as well as visiting the U.S. strategic ally Azerbaijan to witness the challenges and effects of the occupation of 16% of Azerbaijan and displacement of some 12% of its population by Armenia.
Our key aspiration is the liberation of all occupied Azerbaijani lands through the peaceful resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict on the basis of Azerbaijan`s territorial integrity. We believe that one of our most important objectives as a community of people tracing their heritage to the land of Azerbaijan is to educate our government and lawmakers to assist in enhancement of the bilateral ties between Azerbaijan and the United States. Azerbaijani-Americans support the long-term strategic allied relations between the United States and Azerbaijan, and we fully encourage the development of bilateral cooperation between America and all Turkic nations.
Hence, we welcome your positive steps in resolving the NK conflict, and offer you our full support in light of relentless criticism from ultranationalist and maximalist Armenian special interest groups that have built their entire raison d`etre on creating and perpetuating only negativism, hatemongering and intimidation.
With this said, we want to remind that it is Armenia that is occupying Azerbaijan for almost two decades now, not the other way around, and it is Armenia that caused almost a million Azerbaijani refugees and IDPs, and according to U.S. Government, committed crimes against humanity in Azerbaijan, such as the largest war crime in the region, the Khojaly Massacre in 1992. Armenia`s creation of a straw-man in the form of the so-called Nagorno-Karabakh Republic (NKR), an entity recognized by no one, including its own creator, is especially unhelpful to the peace process and causes nothing but irritation and tensions in the region. With multiple U.S. Government statements clearly calling a spade a spade, and with the U.N. Security Council adopting four resolutions calling for the immediate withdrawal of Armenian military forces from Azerbaijan, to restore the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Azerbaijan and the well-being of its people, these are not concessions as the Armenian side improperly labels them, but necessary preconditions of the international law and the will of the people all around Armenia, to restore justice and fairness.
It should be further stressed once again, that we all fully and unequivocally support the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan. No question about it, NK has to remain part of Azerbaijan. Meanwhile, we also recognize the other Helsinki Final Act principles of equal rights and self-determination of peoples, which are envisioned within the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan, and have been agreed to by the Armenian President in Moscow last year.
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