BAKU, Azerbaijan, Aug.24
Trend:
We are planning to resettle the former refugees as soon as possible, President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev said, as he received the newly appointed United Nations Resident Coordinator in Azerbaijan Vladanka Andreeva on August 24 in Baku.
“So now the war is over, the conflict is resolved, there is nothing to talk about what happened. We need to look to the future and of course, our main concern now is a restoration of destroyed territories which are in full devastation. Of course, we count on the future cooperation with the United Nations on these issues, issues related to humanitarian situation, issues related to our plans with the restoration of the liberated territories. Of course, we will need more interaction with UN institutions. As you probably know we also are in contact with UNESCO, and we have been waiting for UNESCO for almost 30 years. I don’t know whether you know it or not, a couple of years ago, last time when we invited UNESCO to come, that was of course, the time of occupation, to come and to see what has been done to our territories. Because the OSCE Minsk Group twice sent a fact-finding mission to the occupied territories. We have been asking them to send another mission, but they did not. We’ve been asking UNESCO to come and to see the damage to our historical monuments caused by Armenian aggressors and they refused. UNESCO officials were saying that UNESCO is not involved in political issues. But after the war was over, we received the signals from UNESCO that they want to come. Of course, we expressed our surprise because they were not coming for almost 30 years, when we have been asking them. They decided to come after the war. Therefore, we, of course, agreed to that and as far as I know the last information was that their mission have been already created but now Armenia is objecting again. Therefore, it’s again delayed.
With other UN institutions also we are in permanent contact. We will need a broad international involvement and assistance from point of view of experts, point of view of advisors. Because the area which we are now restoring is more than 10 thousands square kilometers. And of course, we are in touch with the UN High Commissioner for Refugees’ office and we are planning to resettle the former refugees as soon as possible but the main problem is landmines, and total devastation on the occupied territories. So, we will work with the United Nations and its institutions in good phase as good partners in order to achieve our main goal of restoration of liberated territories. We count on very active involvement of your office in Baku,” noted the head of state.