Azerbaijan slams Karabakh conflict mediators for "neutral zone" term

(Baku Daily) Baku has criticized the OSCE Minsk Group, which mediates a peaceful solution to the Nagornyy Karabakh conflict, for referring to Azerbaijan's Armenian-held Agdam District as "neutral zone".

The Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry said it was "unacceptable" to describe Agdam as a neutral zone since the district has been occupied by Armenian forces as confirmed by a relevant UN resolution, APA news agency said.

"UN resolution No 853 confirmed the fact that Azerbaijan's Agdam District is under occupation... This resolution reiterated support for Azerbaijan's territorial integrity and sovereignty, and demanded the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of the occupiers from Azerbaijan's occupied territories," APA quoted the ministry as saying.

The ministry was commenting on the statement the co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group - France, Russia and the USA - issued on 19 November to say that the wreckage of the Armenian Mi-24 military helicopter downed by Azerbaijani forces on 12 November lied in "neutral territory".

"There is no neutral zone on the line of contact of the troops and there cannot be any. The territories occupied by Armenia have been recognized by the international community as Azerbaijan's territories," the Azerbaijani Defence Ministry said in a statement posted on its website on 20 November.

The ministry also said that the use of the term "humanitarian access" by the co-chairs was "vague" and "meant for those who are unaware of the essence of the conflict".

"There are no civilians in the area to open 'access' or 'a corridor' for their withdrawal from the area where there is fighting," the statement reads.

"The Defence Ministry states once again that the adversary seeks to present the situation in a biased way by regularly carrying out provocations in that area. Regrettably, it  incites international organizations, which have undertaken the mission to resolve the conflict in a peaceful manner and which are obliged to be unbiased, to take the same position as itself ," the statement reads.

The ministry also commented on the calls in the mediators' statement "to cease firing in the vicinity of the crash site and facilitate the demining of the area surrounding the site". It said that those calls were meant to meet Armenia's interests and could only be implemented after Armenian troops withdrew from Azerbaijan's lands.

Earlier,  Azerbaijani Deputy Speaker Ziyafat Asgarov as saying that the co-chairs "made a provocative statement saying that the helicopter is in a neutral zone".

A few hours later, the US co-chair of the OSCE Minsk Group, James Warlick, wrote on his Twitter page: "To be clear, there is no 'neutral' territory in the Nagorno-Karabkh conflict. But there is a "no man's land" separating military forces."