Armenia is backtracking on negotiations process: Hikmat Hajiyev

Armenia undermines the work of the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs on the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, with its warmongering rhetoric, Assistant to Azerbaijan's president, Head of Foreign Policy Affairs Department of the Presidential Administration Hikmat Hajiyev told EurActiv, Report says.

Expressing regret for the lack of constructive activity by Yerevan to make progress in the talks, Hajiyev said that Armenia is backtracking on the negotiations process.

The presidential aide stressed that the only way to resolve the conflict step-by-step, starting with the liberation of Azerbaijan's occupied territories, the withdrawal of Armenian troops from those areas and the return of IDPs to their native lands.

According to him, the recent so-called "elections" held in Nagorno-Karabakh once again showed that the illegal regime established in Azerbaijan's occupied territories is nothing but a criminal group, a part of the mafia clan in the Armenian political leadership.

"Exploitation of silver mines and illegal export of precious metals in occupied Nagorno-Karabakh has already become a tradition, and the income finances the obscure activities of the Armenian political leadership," Hajiyev added.