A sign welcoming visitors to Artsakh

Artsakh will continue to provide the needed assistance to all Armenians who are in need and who choose to settle in Artsakh, the republic’s foreign ministry said on Wednesday in response to Azerbaijani complaints to the OSCE Minsk Group that welcoming Armenian from Lebanon is somehow an expansionist policy.

“The authorities of the Republic of Artsakh are interested in preserving the Armenian community of Lebanon, but at the same time, as part of their inalienable right, they will provide the necessary support to those compatriots who are in need and who choose to come and settle in our Republic,” the Artsakh Foreign Ministry said in a statement issued Wednesday.
In a statement, Azerbaijan’s foreign ministry said it had submitted to the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairmen, detailing how the decision by several Lebanese Armenian families to settle in the Republic of Artsakh as a violation of the norms of international humanitarian law.

“The authorities of the Republic of Artsakh consider it their duty to render assistance to the compatriots who have found themselves in a critical situation caused by various disasters and crises. Moreover, responding to humanitarian disasters is the collective responsibility of the entire international community, which the Republic of Artsakh is a part of, regardless of its temporarily unrecognized political status,” added the statement.

Official Stepanakert stressed that by sending humanitarian assistance to Lebanon and providing shelter to those who have lost their homes as a result of the devastating explosion in Beirut, Artsakh is making its contribution to the common efforts of the international community to implement humanitarian ideals.

“The repeated attempts by Azerbaijan to present providing shelter by Artsakh authorities to people caught in a humanitarian disaster as a violation of the norms of international humanitarian law attests not only to a bigoted interpretation of international documents, but also to a perverted comprehension of humanity in general,” said the foreign ministry statement.

“Throughout the entire conflict and the process of its settlement, the Azerbaijani authorities have demonstrated an open disregard for humanitarian issues, using them only for their own benefit, as a smokescreen to cover up their true indecent goals. This is evidenced by the cynical neglect for over three decades of the rights of about half a million Armenian refugees from Azerbaijan, whose expulsion was accompanied by massacres and brutal pogroms, but official Baku still stubbornly refuses to recognize the responsibility for their tragic fate,” stressed the foreign ministry.

“We consider it unacceptable that the victims of the humanitarian disaster in Beirut become a target of attacks and a subject of political speculations for the Azerbaijani authorities. We reaffirm that the authorities of the Republic of Artsakh will continue to render the necessary assistance to all our compatriots who have found themselves in a difficult situation in their places of residence,” the foreign ministry concluded.