Chingiz Asgarov voices attitude towards European Court's decision

Azerbaijani IDPs' appeal complaining against Armenia to the European Court of Human Rights contributes to international legal recognition of the occupation of Azerbaijani territory, Azerbaijan's Plenipotentiary Representative to the European Court of Human Rights Chingiz Asgarov believes.

"The first international legal recognition of Armenia's occupation of 20 percent of Azerbaijan's territory may become one of the most significant results of this work," Asgarov said in an interview with several media outlets.

The European Court of Human Rights published on Jan. 9 its decision to admit the Azerbaijani IDPs' appeal against Armenia. Elkhan Chiragov and other five IDPs from Azerbaijan's Lachin region appealed to the European Court of Human Rights against Armenia in April 2005.

Roughly after a year and half, the European Court of Human Rights received the first appeal from an Armenian citizen against Azerbaijan. He asserted that he lived in Gulustan village in the Azerbaijani Goranboy region prior to 1992 and had to move to Yerevan as a result of the armed conflict.

Asgarov said the decisions taken by the European Court on Jan. 9 are of intermediate character.

"At this stage the European Court only admitted the appeals. Issues associated with the essence of the case and of fundamental importance in defining violation of the Convention, will be considered at the next stage," Asgarov said.

He also stressed that what is the most important in both decisions are case facts, besides the juridical conclusions. "The decisions indicate that as a result of the hostilities, Armenians occupied not only the entire territory of the former Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Region, but also seven adjacent regions, which occupy an area twice exceeding the territory of Nagorno-Karabakh. Nearly 800,000 Azerbaijanis and people of non-Armenian nationality left their places of residence and became IDPs. The Court noted that at present no Azerbaijani citizen lives in the occupied territory," Asgarov said.


/Trend/