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Azerbaijan ignores all appeals of the [OSCE Minsk Group] Co-Chair countries and continues to stick to its highly destructive attitude at the negotiation table and provocative actions in the conflict zone, Armenian FM Edward Nalbandian stated at the Informal Ministerial Meeting of the OSCE in Vienna.

In his speech Nalbandian pointed to the dire record of Azerbaijan’s noncompliance “encompassing all three dimensions of the OSCE.” “The leadership of Azerbaijan uses every opportunity to boast about multiculturalism allegedly cultivated by them. In reality thousands masterpieces of Armenian cultural and historic heritage, sacred sites, churches, monasteries, cross stones destroyed and erased by Azerbaijan testify to the contrary. The 2016 report of the European Commission Against Racism and Intolerance states: “Political leaders, educational institutions and media have continued using hate speech against Armenians; an entire generation of Azerbaijanis has now grown up listening to this hateful rhetoric”. It is this generation raised in the environment of such propaganda that again and again commits despicable crimes. How could the leadership of Baku talk about multiculturalism at the same time declaring that “all Armenians of the world are number one enemies of Azerbaijan?” Nalbandian said, adding there is nothing smart in trying to mislead the international community, especially those countries that do not have, difficulty to find out the truth, to warn their citizens of the Armenian origin to avoid visiting Azerbaijan, where they will be subjected to outrageous racist discriminating practice on the basis of their ethnicity.

Nalbandian reminded that in April 2016 Azerbaijan unleashed a large scale aggression against Nagorno-Karabakh that was accompanied by the grave violations of international humanitarian law, atrocities against the civilian population,

“During the Vienna Summit it was particularly agreed upon and then reconfirmed in St. Petersburg to establish the OSCE mechanism for investigation of the ceasefire violations; to increase the number and enhance the capacity of the OSCE monitors on the line of contact between Nagorno-Karabakh and Azerbaijan, and on the border between Armenia and Azerbaijan. The commitment on the exclusively peaceful settlement of the conflict was reiterated, the strict adherence to the 1994-1995 ceasefire agreements was emphasized,” Nalbandian said.

“Trust and confidence are built when agreements are implemented. With this understanding Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh gave their consents to implement the mentioned high level agreements. Azerbaijan backtracked from those agreements as it had done with prior commitments many times before. This attitude of Azerbaijan questions its credibility for being a party to negotiations, which honours its agreements,” Armenia’s FM added.