Foreign Ministry denies taking down Karabakh section from website

PanARMENIAN.Net - The website of the Armenian Foreign Ministry currently does not contain the page about the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict but the Foreign Ministry explains the disappearance of the page by a “technical problem”.

Armenian media reported on Monday, February 12 that the page has been removed from the website but a press secretary for the Foreign Ministry said there were other pages that had gone down too.

According to the Foreign Ministry representative, all sections will be restored after the technical problem is resolved.

As reported earlier, Azerbaijani officials complain that Armenia continues to formally stake a claim to Nagorno-Karabakh not only in its constitution, but in its formal statements as well, RFE/RL’s Armenian service reports.

In a conversation with Elchin Amirbayov, Azerbaijan's senior envoy for special assignments who has been closely involved in negotiations with Armenia, first cited the constitution, the preamble of which makes reference to a 1989 act calling to unify Karabakh with Armenia.

Amirbayov said there are several other such claims in Armenia's formal statements and legislation. For example, when Armenia's legislature ratified the 1991 Alma Ata accords, which accepted Soviet republic borders as the borders of the newly independent states, lawmakers added language saying that it did not apply to Karabakh. He also called attention to language on the Armenian Foreign Ministry website saying that Nagorno-Karabakh is "an integral part of historic Armenia," and recent Armenian filings in the European Court of Human Rights that imply a claim on Azerbaijan.