ICAO: Opening Khojaly airport is violation of international law

ICAO considers attempts aimed at putting the Khojaly airport into operation an open violation of international law.

The delegation headed by the director of the State Civil Aviation Administration of Azerbaijan Fuad Guliyev has attended the Sixth Worldwide Air Transport Conference of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) in Montreal, Canada, the administration reported on Tuesday.

At the conference, members of the Azerbaijani delegation held a meeting with the ICAO Secretary General Raymond Benjamin. The sides discussed prospects of cooperation and issues related to improving the safety of air travel. Benjamin emphasized ICAO's position on the inadmissibility of the use of Khojaly airport located in the occupied territories of Azerbaijan.

The ICAO Secretary General said he supported all the resolutions adopted by the UN Security Council in connection with the occupation of Nagorno-Karabakh. He also stressed that attempts made to unilaterally put the Khojaly airport into operation without permission of the Azerbaijani side and perform certification can cause great damage to the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. He said these attempts are evaluated as a violation of the Chicago Convention on Civil Aviation as well as international legal norms.

Earlier, Armenian media reported on the intended commissioning of the airport in Khojaly in the near future.

The commissioning of the airport is an open violation of the Convention on International Civil Aviation (adopted on December 7, 1944 in Chicago), the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry reported earlier.

Azerbaijan will strengthen the legal level use of the application of the Chicago convention.

Azerbaijan banned the use of the airspace over Nagorno-Karabakh occupied by Armenia, as no one can guarantee safe flights in the area, the Azerbaijani Civil Aviation Administration said earlier.

According to Azerbaijani Civil Aviation Administration, Armenia's steps towards the operation of the airport are attempts to violate international aviation law.

This air space belongs to Azerbaijan, so its use by Armenia is illegal.

The International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) and the European Civil Aviation Conference (ICAC) also support the position of Azerbaijan on this issue.