Day.az website, Baku, in Russian;,
23, March 2008

A senior Azerbaijani official has said that the UN General Assembly resolution calling for the withdrawal of the Armenian troops from Azerbaijani occupied territories is the signal of the international community to Armenia that its current policy has no future, Day.az website has said.

In an interview with Day.az on 24 March, Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov said that "Armenia cannot ignore this position of the UN. If any way it tries to do so, it will again show the whole world how it `respects' the international law and which values it pursues".

The minister added that "Armenia saw what Azerbaijani diplomacy is capable of".

Asked about the resolution's impact on the negotiating process with Armenia in view of the fact that the OSCE Minsk Group co-chair countries voted against the document, Mammadyarov said: "The resolution introduced by Azerbaijan was endorsed, however, the co-chairs [from Russia, USA and France] who left themselves in a difficult situation voting against the document, must look for ways out of it. On the other hand, the co-chairmen in the following statements said that they supported Azerbaijan's territorial integrity which is reflected in the UN document."

Mammadyarov told the website that "after the voting, Azerbaijani diplomacy got a wide scope for manoeuvring and further activities. We will develop our efforts in this direction".

Armenia's Arminfo news agency quoted political analyst Levon Melik-Shakhnazaryan as saying that the resolution was the shortcoming of the Armenian foreign policy.

"In fact, it was easy to work when the USA, Russia and France were against the resolution. But apparently, serious work was not done at least to stop the voting on the document," the analyst said.