The Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) -- a club of Muslim countries that features Azerbaijan among its 57 members -- has declared Armenia the aggressor in the 22-year Azerbaijani-Armenian conflict over the breakaway region of Nagorno Karabakh.
The resolution, adopted at a May 19 OIC meeting in Dushanbe, will be the foundation of Karabakh discussions planned at the Organization’s 2011 summit in Cairo, Egypt. “We must keep raising the issue of Nagorno Karabakh at the OIC meetings, or else we will make a step back,” declared Azerbaijan’s Ambassador to Saudi Arabia Tofik Abdulayev.
The Organization also adopted two other Karabakh resolutions that deplore the alleged destruction of Azerbaijani monuments on Armenian-controlled territory and call for aiding the conflict's Azerbaijani victims.
Armenian officials have not commented to international media about the resolutions, but delivered a jab the day the OIC resolutions came out.
The Karabakh peace process has failed because Azerbaijan has shot down each proposal that comes from American, Russian and French mediators, argued Armenian Deputy Foreign Minister Shavarsh Kocharian.
"[A]n impression is being created that Baku is holding talks with itself, arrives at some acceptable decisions for itself and tries to present its own wish as the result of the negotiations," the peeved Kocharian charged.
Giorgi Lomsadze is a journalist based in Tbilisi, and author of Tamada Tales.
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