No room for separatist regime in London exhibition

/AzerNews/

By Sara Rajabova

The separatist regime in Azerbaijan's occupied Nagorno-Karabakh region has no room in the World Travel Market exhibition, which kicked off in London on November 3.

The event's organizer Reed Exhibitions Company made the remark in reply to a letter from Azerbaijani embassy in UK, Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry spokesman Hikmet Hajiyev said.

World Travel Market is a leading global event for the travel industry. It is an important business-to-business event presenting a large range of industry sectors to UK and International travel professionals.

Hajiyev said the members of the UK-Azerbaijan Inter-parliamentary Friendship Group have appealed to the UK government on this issue.

"Reed Exhibitions Company said the separatist regime will in no case be represented at the World Travel Market tourism exhibition with a separate stand. At the same time, so-called Karabakh Tourism Development Agency hasn't been officially allowed to participate at this exhibition," Hajiyev said.

He added that the Azerbaijani embassy in UK continues to cooperate with UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office and Reed Exhibitions company on issues related to the presence of Azerbaijan's occupied regions under the name of 'Karabakh' on the pavilion of Tourism Department of Armenia's Economy Ministry.

Armenia captured Nagorno-Karabakh and seven surrounding regions in a war that followed the Soviet breakup in 1991. More than 20,000 Azerbaijanis were killed and nearly 1 million were displaced as a result of the war.

The large-scale hostilities ended with a Russia-brokered ceasefire in 1994 but Armenia continued its occupation in defiance of four UN Security Council resolutions calling for immediate and unconditional withdrawal from the occupied lands.

Peace talks mediated by Russia, France and the U.S. have produced no results so far.