Paris rules out support to separatist regime of Nagorno-Karabakh

/By AzerNews/

By Sara Rajabova

A French diplomat has ruled out his country’s support to the separatist regime of Nagorno-Karabakh in the occupied Azerbaijani territories.

Pascal Monnier, the French ambassador to Azerbaijan said France doesn’t support the separatist regime of Nagorno-Karabakh adding at the same time that Paris can’t control the visits of this regime’s representatives to France.

“I received a note of protest from Khalaf Khalafov, the deputy foreign minister of Azerbaijan, and immediately handed it over to my country,” he said on May 27.

Baku has sent a protest note to France in connection with a visit of the head of the separatist regime in Azerbaijan’s occupied Nagorno-Karabakh region to France.

Khalafov said at a meeting with Monnier that such facts, as well as the participation of members of the French Senate as “observers” at the “parliamentary” election held on May 3 by the so-called regime of Nagorno-Karabakh, contradicts the spirit of developing friendly and partnership relations between the two countries.

Monnier said France has taken many steps to resolve the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict in recent years. “It is needed to keep this in mind. I understand that Azerbaijan is anxious over the visit of Bako Sahakyan [the head of the separatist regime of Nagorno-Karabakh] to France. He held meetings there with the mayors of cities, and this caused the discontent of Azerbaijan,” he said.

For over two decades, Azerbaijan and Armenia have been locked in conflict which emerged over Armenia's territorial claims against its South Caucasus neighbor. Since a war in the early 1990s, Armenian armed forces have occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan's territory, including Nagorno-Karabakh and seven surrounding regions.

A fragile ceasefire has been in place since 1994, but long-standing efforts by U.S, Russian and French mediators have been largely fruitless so far.

Armenia has not yet implemented the U.N. Security Council's four resolutions on its pullout from neighboring country's territories.