ARMENIA AND KARABAKH NOT PURSUING ORGANIZED POLICY OF SETTLING LIBERATED TERRITORIES

PanARMENIAN.Net - Armenia and Nagorno Karabakh do not pursue an organized policy of settlement of the liberated territories, French Co-Chair of the OSCE Minsk Group Bernard Fassier stated, RFE/RL reported. "On the contrary, to all appearance, there is no deliberate and large-scale program of settling those territories," he said. In his words, Lachin is the only exception: there one can say that settlement is contributed to. "However, as of the rest 6 regions, an impression that they moved there on their own - with the assistance of local NGOs or the Armenian Diaspora, without a large-scale involvement of Yerevan or Stepanakert," Fassier added. In his words, refugees, who left Azerbaijan during the first months of the conflict, form the majority of the population in those regions. People, who suffered from the Spitak earthquake in 1988, form another group. "Finally, the third and smallest group represents people, who left Armenia due to economic considerations," the French diplomat said. In his words, people, who settled in these territories, do not get assistance either from Stepanakert or Yerevan. The inhabited localities, composed of a few families, are isolated from one another due to absence of roads and other communications. Besides Lachin, Bernard Fassier added, nowhere works are organized to restore the infrastructure, damaged in the course of the hostilities. "There is no electric power in many regions. These people are extremely poor and I would not say they live here. They exist in half-demolished houses," he stated.