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The U.S. White House published on 10 July a document covering the basic elements of “Madrid Principles”. Earlier another document was published by the OSCE official web site in this respect. The OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs have announced before calling on the conflict parties to make efforts to solve the conflict based on “Madrid principles”.

After publishing those basic principles, Azeri anti-Armenian campaign falsified the official statements published by the OSCE and U.S. President’s Administration, which, in fact, was expected.

Azeri internet publication “Bakililar.az” published the White House official message translating it into their state language falsifying the information by “inaccurate translation”. We don’t think that people don’t know foreign languages (English or Russian) or legal terms in Azerbaijan; they have just done it as usual.

The first point of the message says “Return of the territories surrounding Nagorno-Karabakh to Azerbaijani control” which has been translated as return of Nagorno-Karabakh to Azerbaijan. In this case the “territories surrounding Nagorno-Karabakh” is misunderstood and wrong translated.

The second line says “An interim status for Nagorno-Karabakh providing guarantees for security and self-governance”. Azeri translators mixed “self-governance” and “local government” terms. We’d encourage our Azeri colleagues to search for those terms in the White House official site or to refresh their mother tongue.

White House message says “A corridor linking Armenia to Nagorno-Karabakh” without any usage of a verb. But our Azeri colleagues decided to “open” that corridor which is open over a decade being unaware that in this case neither the mediators nor the Azeri can do anything.

The other point is about the Nagorno-Karabakh status – “Future determination of the final legal status of Nagorno-Karabakh through a legally binding expression of will”. The Azeri missed translating “Legal status” and “Legally binding expression of will” terms which completely changed the original version of the message.

It’s worth emphasizing that Baku hopes plebiscite will be held on Nagorno-Karabakh status and they will announce that they are not interested in those results. Taking into consideration this concern the mediators fixed “legally binding expression of will” to define the NKR status.

The fifth point of the message defines “The right of all internally displaced persons and refugees to return to their former places of residence” which has been again misunderstood and mistranslated. They have translated “former places of residence” “mother land”. Of course, we have understood their hint and that step is appreciated as the refugees will be given chance to return to their mother land.

The White House message sixth point defines “International security guarantees that would include a peacekeeping operation”. The second part of the sentence is missed because of the translation.

To conclude it’s worth mentioning that “Madrid principles 2007” are published by the White House. The drafted version of the principles is not yet published.