“The Nagorno-Karabakh conflict is a thing of the past,” Aliyev declared on late on Thursday, addressing a session of the UN General Assembly.
“Azerbaijan no longer has an administrative-territorial unit called Nagorno-Karabakh,” he said, adding that the international community should stop using the Armenian-populated territory’s name.
“The Nagorno-Karabakh conflict remains unresolved,” countered Armen Grigorian, the secretary of Armenia’s Security Council. “The issue of Nagorno-Karabakh’s status still awaits a solution and we see that solution within the framework of the OSCE Minsk Group.”
The U.S. ambassador to Armenia, Lynne Tracy, has repeatedly made similar statements in recent weeks.
“We do not see the status of Nagorno-Karabakh as having been resolved,” Tracy insisted on September 13 in remarks condemned by the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry.
Aliyev ruled out on July 22 any negotiations on Karabakh’s status, saying that Yerevan must instead recognize Azerbaijani sovereignty over the disputed territory.
Later in July, the U.S., Russian and French diplomats co-chairing the Minsk Group issued a joint statement calling for a “negotiated, comprehensive, and sustainable settlement of all remaining core substantive issues of the conflict.” They said the conflicting parties should resume talks “as soon as possible.”
The Karabakh issue was on the agenda of Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov’s talks with his French counterpart Jean-Yves Le Drian held on Thursday on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly. According to the Russian Foreign Ministry, the two men reaffirmed their governments’ intention to continue to strive for “stabilizing the situation in Nagorno-Karabakh, first and foremost in the OSCE Minsk Group format.”
Le Drian also met separately in New York with Armenian Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan.