The U.S. State Department has reviewed the announcement in its human rights annual report where it is stated that “Armenia continues to occupy the Azerbaijani territory of Nagorno-Karabagh and the surrounding seven regions”. According to the Armenian National Committee office of Washington, the modified text has been installed on the web page of the U.S. State Department this week, in which it is stated:
“Armenian forces have occupied large territories of Azerbaijan near Nagorno-Karabagh. Armenian officials claim that they have not “occupied” Nagorno-Karabagh itself”.
Despite that, the modified text still includes the section on Azerbaijan where there still remains the announcement that “Armenia continues to occupy the Azerbaijani territory of Nagorno-Karabagh and the surrounding seven regions of Azerbaijan”.
“We accept the fact that the State Department has responded to our concerns that the wrong qualification of the status of Nagorno-Karabagh would be harmful for the role of the U.S. government as the subjective intermediary of the Minsk group,” announced executive director of the Armenian National Committee in Washington Aram Hambaryan, according to “Radio Liberty”. “We are still worried that the modified text continues to misinterpret the situation, and also that the section of the report on Azerbaijan still makes the wrong claims; that makes the text incompatible with the Armenian text that was modified by the State Department.”
During the press conference held on Friday, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Armenia, Vardan Oskanyan, referred to this and said:
“I personally haven’t taken a look at the text, but the change has been made. The ambassador has seen it. I was simply on the road and didn’t have the opportunity to see it. So, the State Department kept its promise and I kept my promise to you all.”
Let us recall that Oskanyan had announced that that section of the report was an error that the State Department will correct.