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Azerbaijan will never concede to Nagorny Karabakh - president

RIA Novosti

04:40 14/07/2010 BAKU, July 14 (RIA Novosti) - Azerbaijan will never make concessions to the breakaway region of Nagorny Karabakh, Azerbaijani state-run news agency AzerTAc said, quoting President Ilham Aliyev.

"The Azerbaijani state and Azerbaijani people will never provide Nagorny Karabakh with any status that could divide it from Azerbaijan," Aliyev was quoted as saying during a cabinet meeting on Tuesday.

A long-standing dispute over Nagorny Karabakh, a breakaway region inside Azerbaijan with a predominantly ethnic Armenian population, has been a sticking point in relations between Azerbaijan and Armenia. The conflict first erupted in 1988, when the region claimed independence from Azerbaijan to join Armenia.

A fragile ceasefire has been in place in the region since a brutal war between the two countries over the disputed enclave in early 1990s, which claimed more than 30,000 lives on both sides. Karabakh has since remained under Armenian control.

Baku has fiercely opposed any decision on Karabakh that could be interpreted as giving the region independence from Azerbaijan.

In May, the region elected a 33-seat parliament with a voter turnout of almost 68%. Azerbaijani officials called the elections "illegal," saying they could seriously harm peace efforts.

The conflict is mediated by the OSCE Minsk Group, comprising the United States, Russia and France.

The OSCE Madrid principles, adopted in November 2007, envisage a stage-by-stage resolution of the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict that should start with the gradual liberation of parts of Azerbaijan bordering Karabakh that were partly or fully occupied by Karabakh Armenian forces during the 1991-94 war. In return, Karabakh should retain a corridor to Armenia and be able to determine its final status in a future referendum.

In January, Armenia and Azerbaijan agreed a preamble to an agreement on Nagorny Karabakh, revising and updating the Madrid principles. However, Azerbaijan later renewed threats of military action to retake the disputed region over a lack of progress at talks with Armenia.