Armenia urges UN to send mission to Karabakh to monitor rights
Armenia on Saturday urged the United Nations to send a mission to ensure the safety of ethnic Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh after the territory was seized back by Azerbaijan, which promised to respect minority rights, AFP reports.
For the second time since the swift Azerbaijani operation in the mountainous territory, the top diplomats of the adversaries clashed at the United Nations as Western powers voiced alarm.
Armenia -- where memories remain vivid of mass killings in the waning days of the Ottoman Empire that Armenians, the United States and many historians consider genocide -- has accused Turkish ally Azerbaijan of planning ethnic cleansing.
"After failure of preventing genocide in Rwanda, the United Nations managed to create mechanisms for prevention, thus making the 'never again' a meaningful pledge," Armenian Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan said.
"But today we are at the brink of another failure," he said in a speech to the UN General Assembly.
He called for the United Nations to send a mission immediately to Nagorno-Karabakh to "monitor and assess the human rights, humanitarian and security situation on the ground."
Azerbaijan's foreign minister, Jeyhun Bayramov, had accused Armenia of disinformation when the two top diplomats joined a special Security Council session Thursday.
On Saturday, Bayramov also spoke at the General Assembly and said that Azerbaijan, which is mostly Muslim, would respect the Armenians, who are Christian.
