“It’s impossible to find any quantitative standard to assess the damage Azerbaijan has caused to Nagorno Karabakh, Armenia and itself because of its policy of use of force and propagation of hatred against Armenians,” Armenian Deputy Foreign Minister Shavarsh Kocharyan said in response to Azerbaijan’s financial claims on Armenia.
The Azerbaijani government estimates the ‘total damage’ inflicted to this country by the ‘Armenian occupation’ at an astronomical sum of $431.5 billion. Deputy head of Azerbaijan’s intergovernmental economic cooperation department, Natig Hasanov, said that the figure was based on researches made by different ministries and agencies, including the Ministry of Ecology and Natural Resources, the State Committee on Work with Refuges and IDPs and other state organizations, as well as on the information of the Ministry of Economic Development.
Shavarsh Kocharyan noted that “in response to the realization of the right of people of Nagorno Karabakh to self-determination, Azerbaijan started mass slaughter and ethnic cleansing of the Armenian population, unleashed a large-scale aggression against the people of Artsakh, which resulted in a number of human losses, destruction of infrastructures and occupation of NKR territories, which continues into today.”
[quote align=”center” color=”#999999″]“By making a hero out of an axe-murderer, refusing to withdraw the snipers from the line of contact, create mechanisms of investigation of border incidents and reinforce the ceasefire regime, organizing provocations at the line of contact, Azerbaijan carries responsibility for the human losses, for every killed soldier irrespective of his nationality,” the Deputy Foreign Minister said.[/quote]
“No manipulation of figures, international law or distorted history of the region will help the Azerbaijani leadership escape responsibility for the losses suffered by all parties to the conflict and the purposeful torpedoing of the mediators’ efforts towards the settlement of the conflict and establishment of peace and stability in the region,” Shavarsh Kocharyan said.
