OSCE countries overlook CFE violations by Baku

December 2, 2010 - 11:36 AMT

PanARMENIAN.Net - Azerbaijan is the only country on the European continent that boasts the manifold increase of its military spending, Armenian President stated.

“However, no necessary actions are taken with regard to Azerbaijan flagrantly exceeding the maximal levels on possession of treaty-limited materiel set by the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe; moreover, such offensive materiel is being sold to it, including by states participating in the OSCE,” Serzh Sargsyan said when addressing the OSCE summit in Astana.

The President went on saying that all this is accompanied by blatant Armenophobic statements by Azerbaijani leaders, by calls that incite animosity, aggression and violence.

“It has reached the point where Azerbaijani officials never miss a chance to claim that the capital of Armenia, Yerevan, is located (quote) “on historical Azeri lands” (end of quote). Recently at UNESCO they challenged the intellectual rights to the Khachkar, the stone-cross masterpiece of Armenian Christian art, insisting that the Khachkar is nothing else but an example of Azeri art. If that were to be the case, one may only wonder what was the rationale, just five years ago, behind the barbaric destruction of one of the greatest-ever monuments of that art, the medieval Armenian cemetery in Jugha with thousands of Khachkars, and the construction in its place of a military firing-range. Incidentally, this became the present day epitome of a long-standing and persistent policy of total eradication of Armenian cultural heritage in Nakhijevan, a region that enjoys the highest degree of autonomy within Azerbaijan,” he said.