Acting UN Resident Coordinator in Armenia Lila Pieters Yahia was invited to Armenia’s Foreign Ministry on Saturday and informed that the ministry “strongly condemns the involvement of the UN Office in Azerbaijan in the event organized in Shushi on March 18.”
The ministry said that a note of protest was handed to the UN representative in this regard.
Azerbaijan organized an event in Shushi (Susa) on Friday dedicated to the 30th anniversary of the country’s membership in the UN. Baku said that the UN resident coordinator in Azerbaijan and other representatives of the organization participated in the event during which a UN flag was raised in Shushi.
The UN did not immediately comment on the reaction in Yerevan.
Earlier, Nagorno-Karabakh’s ethnic Armenian authorities also condemned Azerbaijan’s holding of such an event in Shushi.
Stepanakert accused official Baku of trying to use international structures in its policy aimed at “legitimizing the results of its aggression” against Nagorno-Karabakh in 2020.
Shushi (Susa) is a key town in Nagorno-Karabakh contested by both Armenians and Azerbaijanis. Ethnic Armenians took control of the town in 1992 as they fought a separatist war against Azerbaijan following the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Azerbaijani forces regained control of Shushi during the second Karabakh war in 2020. The capture of the strategic town by Azerbaijan marked a turning point in the hostilities and was followed by a Moscow-brokered ceasefire that brought Russian peacekeepers to the region.
Nagorno-Karabakh’s de-facto authorities consider Shushi and other areas of the former Nagorno-Karabakh autonomous oblast proper currently controlled by Azerbaijan to be occupied territories.
Baku considers the town and the rest of Nagorno-Karabakh to be Azerbaijan’s sovereign territory.