German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock laid a wreath on Friday at the memorial to the victims of the Armenian genocide in World War I on the start of her two-day visit to the South Caucasian conflict region around Nagorno-Karabakh.
Baerbock is expected to meet Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan in the capital Yerevan on Friday. She is also expected to meet Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan.
The central topic will be the predicament of the more than 100,000 ethnic Armenians who have fled the region.
Armenia views this as a forced resettlement. The Azerbaijani army forced the surrender of the local army in Nagorno-Karabakh on September 19. Azerbaijan argues that the people left Nagorno-Karabakh of their own free will and that there was no reason to flee.
On Saturday, Baerbock plans to meet the local Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov in the Azerbaijani capital Baku.
During World War I, Armenians were systematically persecuted in the Ottoman Empire and also sent on death marches into the Syrian desert. Historians speak of up to 1.5 million victims in 1915 and 1916.
Turkey, as the legal successor to the Ottoman Empire, admits the deaths of 300,000 to 500,000 Armenians during that period and regrets the massacres. However, it strictly rejects any categorization of the incident as genocide.
In 2016, the Bundestag passed a resolution specifically categorizing the atrocities committed against the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire 100 years ago as "genocide."
According to the German Foreign Office, Baerbock also plans to visit a reception centre for refugees from Nagorno-Karabakh in Armenia.
- German
- FM
- Armenia
Source: www.dailyfinland.fi
