Deputy FM: "Manipulation of figures cannot held Azerbaijan"
Armenian Deputy Foreign Minister Shavarsh Kocharyan has responded to Azerbaijan's financial claims on Armenia.
Azerbaijan's Ministry of Economic Development earlier said that Armenia has inflicted Azerbaijan a total of $431.5 billion damage by ‘occupying' Nagorno Karabakh and the neighboring territories.
"It is impossible to find a qualitative criterion to estimate the damage Azerbaijan caused to Karabakh, Armenia and itself, by using force and pursuing Armenophobic policies," Shavarsh Kocharyan said during an interview to the Armenpress news agency.
"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 to this date.
And today, by declaring an axe-murderer a hero, refusing to withdraw snipers from the line of contact, elaborate mechanisms of investigation of border incidents and strengthen the ceasefire, and inciting provocations along the line of contact, Azerbaijan bears responsibility for every and each human loss, irrespective of his nationality," he said.
"The misrepresentation and manipulation of figures, international law or distorted history of the region will not help the Azerbaijani leadership escape responsibility for the human losses and the purposeful torpedoing of the mediators' efforts towards the settlement of the conflict and establishment of peace and stability in the region," said the Armenian official.
