Khojalu population became hostage of Baku authorities’ dirty tricks who turned this tragedy into speculative political capital, the Foreign Ministry of Nagorno Karabakh Republic said, commenting on the discussion of Khojalu issue in OSCE Parliamentary Assembly.

“Baku is trying to present the betrayal of Khojalu population by Azerbaijan’s authorities as the Armenians’ revenge for the bloody carnage in Sumgait. Meanwhile, the propaganda is carried out with obvious insinuation and escalation of ethnic intolerance and enmity towards Armenians. Regularly playing on Khojalu, the official Baku is trying to distract the attention of the international community from the massacre of Armenians in Sumgait, Baku, Kirovabad, Khanlar and other Azerbaijani settlements the whole territory of which saw in fact barefaced extermination of Armenians. The same happened also in frontier regions of Karabakh, in particular, in the village of Maragha where intervention of Azerbaijan's regular army perpetrated a bloody massacre of about 100 locals in April 1992,” says the statement disseminated by the press service of NKR Foreign Ministry.

Earlier, representative of Azerbaijan in OSCE PA voiced Azerbaijani delegation’s readiness to raise the issue of the alleged “Khojalu massacre” during Assembly’s winter session.