By Sara Rajabova

Azerbaijan has ruled out any territorial concession in the Armenian-Azerbaijani Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov said on July 10 that the negotiations on resolving the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict continue.

Azerbaijan’s position is clear, he said, adding that concession in Nagorno-Karabakh issue can be made only within Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity.

Mammadyarov said granting status to Nagorno-Karabakh is not the issue that should be resolved right now.

He further added that media reports that the U.S. Senate has allocated financial support to the separatist regime in the occupied Nagorno-Karabakh contradict the reality.

Mammadyarov said aid allocated to the "victims to Nagorno-Karabakh conflict."

“That is, the assistance will be provided to all those who was a victim of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, including Azerbaijanis. Information that assistance is allocated only to the Armenians is a lie. If you read this document, you will see that the U.S. government will provide assistance to the victims of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict,” Mammadyarov said.

For over two decades, Azerbaijan and Armenia have been locked in a conflict that 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.

Following the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan, the separatist regime was established in Azerbaijan's occupied Nagorno-Karabakh regime.

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 any of the four U.N. Security Council resolutions urging a pullout from its neighboring country's territories.

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Sara Rajabova is AzerNews’ staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @SaraRajabova



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