"The States Members of the United Nations solemnly reaffirm their unequivocal condemnation of all acts, methods and practices of terrorism as criminal and unjustifiable, wherever and by whomever committed, including those, which jeopardize the friendly relations among States and peoples and threaten the territorial integrity of States;
Acts, methods and practices of terrorism constitute a grave violation of the purposes and principles of the United Nations, which may pose a threat to international peace and security, jeopardize friendly relations among States, hinder international cooperation and aim at the destruction of human rights, fundamental freedoms and the democratic basis of society".

From the Declaration on Measures to Eliminate International Terrorism adopted by the United Nations General Assembly at its forty-ninth session (resolution 49/60, annex)

In unison with its aggression against Azerbaijan, Armenia is actively engaged in subversive activity on Azerbaijani territory. The Armenian secret service and various Armenian terrorist organizations are systematically and deliberately perpetrating subversive and terrorist acts against peaceful citizens in Baku, Ganja and other major population centres in the Republic of Azerbaijan, targeting industrial units and means of transport. Existing data indicate that the Armenian terrorist organizations have substantial material and human resources at their disposal as well as ample "experience" in preparing and implementing terrorist acts.

International Armenian terrorism

The use of terrorism in the campaign to implement Armenia's annexationist plans has bloody historic antecedents. Armenian terrorist organizations began to emerge in the late nineteenth century in the form of the Institute of Violence, whose aim was the establishment of "Greater Armenia". Armenian terrorism assumed global dimensions in the early 1970s, when terrorist training bases appeared in a number of countries, the largest of them being established in the Middle East. The main activities of subversive groups from such terrorist organizations as the Armenian Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia (ASALA), the Commandos of Justice of the Armenian Genocide (CSAG) and the Armenian Revolutionary Army (ARA) were carried out in the countries of Western Europe and North America.

Unlike the nationalist parties Henchak and Dashnaktsutyun, which formulated an ideological platform based on a policy of assertion of territorial claims, these organizations fall into a strictly military-terrorist category, dealing with "practical problems" in implementation of the "projects" devised by their ideologues. They are to blame for the murder of hundreds of citizens of the United States of America, Turkey, the USSR, France, Azerbaijan and other countries.

It is an established fact, for example, that the founder of the ASALA terrorist organization, Hakob Hakobyan, began his dismal career as a member of the terrorist group that massacred the Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympic Games in 1972.

In January 1978, a terrorist group consisting of S. Zatikyan, Z. Bagdarsyan and A. Stepanyan caused an explosion in the Moscow underground railway system whose victims were innocent citizens, including women and children.

The foremost acts of Armenian international terrorism occurred in the 1980s, when ASALA was involved in the organization of a series of bomb blasts in the French capital, Paris, one of them at the city's Orly airport. Ten people were killed and 150 injured as a result of these terrorist acts.

Since the late 1980s, Armenian terrorism in the territory of the former USSR has tended to increase, particularly following Armenia's open assertion of territorial claims on Azerbaijan and the launching of armed operations in the Nagorno-Karabakh region of the Azerbaijan Republic.

In April 1992, Colonel Blakhotin, Commanding Officer of the internal troops of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR in the Northern Caucasus and Transcaucasia, was shot dead at the entrance to his home in the centre of Rostov (Russian Federation). The arrested terrorists were individuals of Armenian nationality, one a resident of Yerevan, the second of Khankendi and the third of Rostov. According to the authorities responsible for the murder investigation, the clues led to centres of terrorist organizations in the service of the official authorities of Armenia and their protégés in Nagorno-Karabakh.

Terrorist acts on the roads and land transport in the territory of Azerbaijan

The first entry in the tragic list of crimes by Armenian terrorists in the territory of Azerbaijan was made in 1984, when, in Baku, a passenger bus on the No. 106 route was blown up, killing one woman - mother of two children - and injuring several other people. Members of the Azerbaijani Special Service detained the terrorist responsible for that callous crime, identified as an Armenian named Vartanov, who was connected with underground Armenian terrorist groups in Azerbaijan.

In early 1988, terrorism in Armenia was raised to the status of State policy and its target was the territory of Azerbaijan. Weapons and ammunition were transported on a large scale from Armenia to the Nagorno-Karabakh area of the Republic of Azerbaijan and into the hands of underground terrorist groups in other parts of the territory of Azerbaijan. In 1988 alone, more than 100 instances of the illegal manufacture and the theft of firearms were uncovered by the law enforcement agencies of Azerbaijan. During the same year, Armenian terrorists carried out 32 terrorist acts in the territory of the former Nagorno-Karabakh autonomous region of Azerbaijan and in districts on the frontier with Armenia, the victims of which were primarily civilians.

Terrorists cut off the roads between Azerbaijani villages, set ambushes on the main roads and on numerous occasions blew up bridges and other vital facilities, including the pipeline supplying Ganja (Azerbaijan's second largest city) with its drinking water.

On 7 October 1989, the road bridge across the river Halfalichai on the southern edge of the town of Khankendi, was blown up. On 29 April 1992, the Supreme Court of the Republic of Azerbaijan sentenced the perpetrator of this terrorist act -A. Abramyan - to 15 years imprisonment.

Over the period from 19 January to 17 February 1990, a terrorist group based in Irevan carried out numerous raids from the territory of Armenia on the innocent inhabitants of frontier villages in the Gazakh district of Azerbaijan, resulting in the deaths of F. Mustafaev, inhabitant of Khirimly village, and S. Magerramov and N. Guliev, shepherds from Sofulu village. The same terrorist group carried out an attack on a patrol vehicle of the Gazakh district division of internal affairs and plotted the destruction of a railway locomotive. Two
members of the group, L. Arutyunyan and A. Mkrtchyan, detained by the law enforcement agencies of Azerbaijan, were sentenced to five and six years imprisonment, respectively, by the Supreme Court of the Republic of Azerbaijan.

On 18 February 1990, 13 people were injured by an explosion in an inter-city bus on the Shusha-Baku line, at the 105 km marker on the Evlakh-Lachin road.

On 4 March 1990, Armenian terrorists blew up the Nabiyar-Shusha pipeline, which supplied the town of Shusha with its drinking water.

On 11 July 1990, between the settlements of Getavan and Charektar in the Agdere district of Azerbaijan, an armed assault was launched on a road convoy, traveling under troop escort and conveying people and goods to the town of Kelbajar. In that terrorist act, three people were killed and 23 injured. On 19 June 1992, the Supreme Court of the Republic of Azerbaijan sentenced to death by firing squad A. Airiyan, the individual identified during the investigation as the perpetrator of this crime.

On 10 August 1990, in the Khanlar district of Azerbaijan, Armenian terrorists blew up an inter-city bus operating on the Tbilisi-Agdam route, killing 20 passengers and injuring 30. The perpetrators of that terrorist act were arrested before they were able to carry out their plan to blow up, on 17 June 1991, a bus on the Agdam-Tbilisi route. The Supreme Court of the Republic Azerbaijan found A. Avanesyan and M. Tatevosyan guilty of those crimes and sentenced them to, respectively, death by firing squad and 15 years imprisonment.

On the instructions of his leaders, M. Grigoryan, a member of the terrorist organization Ergraparkh, based in the territory of Armenia, set up a terrorist group composed of inhabitants of the Echmiadzin district of Armenia, which, in November 1990, was sent into the territory of Azerbaijan. This group was disarmed by the law enforcement agencies of Azerbaijan while attempting to carry out acts of terrorism and sabotage. By its decision of 18 June 1991, the Supreme Court of the Republic of Azerbaijan handed down the following
prison sentences on the members of the group: T. Khachatryan - nine years, Z. Oganyan - eight years and A. Grigoryan - seven years.

On 9 January 1991, at the 5 km marker on the Lachin-Shusha road in the area of Galadarasi village, Armenian terrorists fired on a UAZ-469 vehicle belonging to military unit 44688 of the city of Ganja, killing the driver, Sergeant I. I. Goek, the commander of the reconnaissance battalion, Lieutenant Colonel A. P. Larionov, the chief of staff in the commandant's office of military unit 3505 (the command centre for the special units of the interior forces of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR), Major I. D. Ivanov, and a journalist from the newspaper Molodezh Azerbaidzhana - Ms. S. A. Askerova, born 1969, who left an orphaned infant son. On 23 March 1993, the perpetrators of this crime - A. Mkrtchyan, G. Petrosyan, A. Mangasaryan, G. Arutyunyan and G. Arustamyan, who, in addition to the case in question, had been responsible for other acts of terrorism and murders - were sentenced by the Supreme Court of the Republic of Azerbaijan to death by firing squad, and other members of the terrorist group to prison sentences of varying lengths.

The law enforcement agencies of Azerbaijan detained and disarmed two members of the Armenia-based terrorist organization Urartu, A. Tatevosyan and V. Petrosyan, who, on 2 August 1991, had carried out an armed attack on inhabitants of the Kelbajar district of Azerbaijan. The terrorists in question were sentenced by the Supreme Court of the Republic of Azerbaijan to ten and eight years imprisonment, respectively.

After progressively stepping up military activity in the mountainous part of Karabakh and at the same time inserting subversives and saboteurs, contract killers and agents provocateurs throughout Azerbaijani territory, Armenia outposted guerillas to the rail links into Azerbaijan. In accordance with a previously arranged plan, a terrorist campaign began on passenger trains.

On 27 May 1989, on a train from Yerevan to Baku, an Armenian citizen, V. Minasyan, was arrested and found to be in possession of an explosive device. In her statement she confessed that she had been intending to carry out an act of sabotage in Baku. The first attempt to carry out the plans did not succeed, but on 24 July 1989 there was an explosion on a train of Azerbaijan Railways at Karchevan station.

On May 30, 1991, 11 people were killed and 22 injured following an explosion on a passenger train from Moscow to Baku near Khasavyurt station (Dagestan, Russian Federation).

In May 1991 officials of the law enforcement agencies arrested S. Aznaryan, an inhabitant of the Noemberyan district of Armenia, in a Baku-Tbilisi train at Shamkir station and removed from his possession two mines, a sub-machine-gun and maps of the Azerbaijan rail and road network.

On 31 July 1991 a Moscow-Baku passenger train was blown up near Temirgau station (Dagestan, Russian Federation), killing 16 people and injuring 20.

On February 28, 1993, 11 people were killed and 18 injured near Gudermes station (Dagestan, Russian Federation) by a bomb placed in a Baku-Kislovodsk train.

On 2 June 1993 a passenger carriage was blown up in a siding at Baku railway station. On 22 July 1994, I. Khatkovskiy was found guilty of committing this crime and sentenced to eight years' imprisonment by the Supreme Court of the Azerbaijan Republic.

On 1 February 1994 a Kislovodsk-Baku passenger train was blown up at Baku station, killing 3 people and injuring more than twenty.

On 9 April 1994 a railway car was blown up at Khudat station.

On 19 March 1994 a bomb placed in one of the carriages of a train by Armenian terrorists exploded an underground railway station in Baku. As a result of this act, 14 people were left lying lifeless and 42 were injured, some seriously.

Only thanks to the alertness of the railway staff who on 26 March 1994 found an explosive device in a railway carriage at Kazy-Magomed station of the Azerbaijani Railways another tragedy was averted.

Six people were killed and three wounded at Dagestanskiye Ogni station (Russian Federation) on 13 April 1994 as a result of an explosion on a Moscow-Baku passenger train.

On 3 July 1994 there was an explosion on a train between the 28 May and Gyanjlik underground stations, killing 14 people and wounding 54.

The heightened danger zone for flights is not comparable with that for terrestrial communications and is confined to the airspace over the Nagorno-Karabakh region of the Republic of Azerbaijan and the districts of Azerbaijan, which border Armenia and are within range of Armenian anti-aircraft and rocket emplacements. In the majority of cases of Azerbaijani aircraft were destroyed in the skies over Azerbaijan from the Armenian territories.

In December 1988 a military transport aircraft on the Baku-Erevan route with rescue-workers and humanitarian aid for victims of the Armenian earthquake on board suffered a disaster near Irevan in circumstances, which remain unexplained. Some versions speak of firing, and others of the deliberate disorientation of the pilot by air traffic control at Irevan airport (in view of the low altitude of the flight and the mountainous terrain) or the placing of a bomb on board. The underlying motive for this planned "air disaster" is completely unprecedented, in that the victims of this crime were 79 people who had been sent on a humanitarian mission from Azerbaijan to Armenia, despite the difficulties that had by then arisen in relations between the two republics.

Civilian aircraft of minor Azerbaijani airlines have been the most frequent targets for the criminal missile attacks of Armenian terrorists.

For example, on November 20, 1991, Mi-8 helicopter carrying a group of peacemakers from Russia, Kazakhstan and the senior Azerbaijani leadership was shot down near the village of Karakend in the Khojaven district of the Republic of Azerbaijan. The killing of 22 people, including statesmen from three countries, effectively put an end to the first attempt to settle the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict and prompted an escalation of violence in the region.

On 28 January 1992 a civilian helicopter flying on the Agdam-Shusha route was shot down by Armenian terrorists over the Azerbaijani town of Shusha, killing 41 passengers, most of them women and children, as well as the crew.

On 17 March 1994 an Iranian C-130 transport aircraft was shot down in Azerbaijani airspace over Azerbaijani territory occupied by Armenian armed forces, resulting in the deaths of 32 people who were citizens of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

The single successful case of sabotage carried out by Armenian terrorists against vessels of the Azerbaijan Caspian Shipping Line occurred on 8 January 1992. An explosion on the ferry "Sovetskaya Kalmykia" operating between Krasnovodsk and Baku claimed the lives of 25 people and injured 88. The same year an attempt to carry an explosive device on to the steamer "Sabit Orujiev" was stopped in time.

Information regarding the criminal case of I. Khatkovsky

On 6 August 1993 Igor Anatol'evich Khatkovsky, a Russian national born in 1959, correspondent for the newspaper Demokratichesky Til'zit, resident of the village of Gastelovo in the Slavsky District of the Kaliningrad region of the Russian Federation, was detained in Baku by the authorities of the Republic of Azerbaijan. He was found to be in possession of TNT slabs and other special means of committing acts of sabotage. On that basis, criminal charges were filed against I. Khatkovsky and an investigation was launched.

The investigation process revealed that in February 1993 I. Khatkovsky, with the help of the station chief's office of the Armenian secret service in the Russian Federation, came to Irevan, where he was recruited by the head of the intelligence service of the Directorate for National Security (the former KGB) of Armenia, Lieutenant-Colonel Jan Anushavanovich Oganesyan, who is directly involved in the organization and conduct of subversive and terrorist operations in the territory of Azerbaijan. Working actively with I.

Khatkovsky were Major Ashot Araratovich Galoyan, an agent of the Armenian Directorate for National Security, Boris Vasgenovich Simonyan and Valery Surenovich Petrosian, residents of Moscow, also suspected of collaborating with the Armenian special services. They gave detailed instructions to I. Khatkovsky on how to organize the bombing of transportation facilities, communications and vital services in Azerbaijan, gather intelligence information and commit terrorist acts in the territory of the Russian Federation.

The investigation documented and proved that I. Khatkovsky was responsible for the bombing on 2 June 1993 of a passenger railway carriage in a train station in Baku and the mining on 19 May 1993 of a goods train in a station in the city of Derbent (Russian Federation).

On the instructions of the Armenian secret service, Khatkovsky gathered information on the social, political and economic situation in Azerbaijan, and about government leaders and heads of political parties, schedules for trains travelling from the Russian Federation to Azerbaijan, border, customs and passport control procedures, the location of important transportation hubs and engineering installations, gas and oil pipelines and electric power lines along railway itineraries, as well as information about specific individuals living in Baku.

Making frequent trips to Irevan and Baku, I. Khatkovsky passed the information he had gathered on to J. Oganesyan, for whom he prepared several detailed written reports. As compensation and in repayment for expenses incurred in Irevan and Moscow during February and March 1993, he received from J. Oganesyan, B. Simonyan and A. Galoyan funds amounting to 470,000 Russian roubles. Moreover, as part of the conspiracy, in exchange for the funds they had paid, they were given receipts from a commercial business called "Topan", which is in fact a cover for the intelligence service of the Armenian Directorate for National Security and is
located in the Hotel Ani in Erevan.

On 22 July 1994, the Supreme Court of the Republic of Azerbaijan found I. Khatkovsky guilty as charged with the above mentioned crimes and sentenced him to eight years of imprisonment.

The Ministry of National Security of Azerbaijan informed the Federal Counterespionage Service (FCS) of the Russian Federation of certain facts brought to light during the investigation concerning the terrorist activities of the Armenian secret service in Azerbaijan and in the territory of the Russian Federation using Russian citizens. As a result, on 13 May 1994 J. Oganesyan, B. Simonyan and A. Galoyan, and at a later date another agent of the local office, V. Petrosian, were arrested in Moscow by FCS agents. Upon their arrest, the suspects were found to have made caches containing large stocks of explosives, weapons and ammunition. The chief military prosecutor of the Russian Federation filed criminal charges against the above-mentioned individuals under articles 68 (subversive activities), 213 (terrorism) and 218 (illegal possession of ammunition) of the Penal Code of the Russian Federation. Their case has now, in spite of repeated attempts by Armenian authorities to influence the sequence of events, been handed over to the courts.

The case of Igor Khatkovsky helped the secret service of the Russian Federation to uncover and neutralize a group of agents of the Directorate for National Security (the former KGB) of Armenia who were operating in Russian territory and were responsible for organizing terrorist acts in Azerbaijan, Georgia and the Russian Federation. Despite persistent attempts by the Armenian authorities to avoid publicity concerning the participation of the Armenian secret service in terrorist activities and to influence the investigation, the case of the Armenian terrorists was handed over to the courts and the circumstances were the subject of reports by the mass information media. For instance, the Russian newspaper Argumenty i fakty reported the following facts:

"... Between 1991 and 1993, the countries of the Commonwealth of Independent States suffered a series of brutal terrorist acts ... In Russian, Azerbaijani and Georgian territory, passenger and goods trains headed for Baku began to be blown up with alarming regularity. The services responsible were run off their feet searching for the malefactors. In the summer of 1993, in Baku, a certain Igor Khatkovsky was arrested and found to be in possession of a whole set of explosive devices ... In the autumn of the same year, another operative, Soso Aroyana, an agent of the outer-espionage service of the Transcaucasian Military District, was arrested while attempting to place a bomb on a train from Tbilisi to Baku. Both gave evidence, which was reported to Moscow. The Russian secret services were involved in the case. After a carefully planned operation in May 1994, officials of the Federal Security Service (FSB) (at that time the Federal Counterespionage Service (FCS)) of the Russian Federation in Moscow arrested a group of terrorist organizers ... The head of the group was Lieutenant-Colonel Jan Oganesyan, the chief of the department of intelligence and subversive operations in the territory of an adversary, the Directorate for National Security of Armenia (counterpart of FSB). The second was his subordinate, Lieutenant-Colonel Ashot Galoyan. A third, Boris Simonyan, worked in FCS, in the department dealing with combating terrorism. All three were Russian nationals, residents of Moscow. The first two were consultant members of the Fund for the Technological and Intellectual Development of Russia (TIRR), which was headed by a certain Valery Petrosian ..." (Alexander Kakotkin, "Takoe ni v odnom detektive ne pridumaesh", Argumenty i fakty, No. 26 (819), June 1996).

According to information from the same source, the military tribunal of the Tambov garrison sentenced J. Oganesyan, A. Galoyan and B. Simonyan to various terms of imprisonment. In the same article in the newspaper Argumenty i fakty, it was further reported that, according to unofficial sources, "... Ashot Galoyan, after having attempted to hang himself in his cell, was promoted to colonel on his return to Armenia (after his release - Ed.)" (Alexander Kakotkin, ibid.)

Evidence of the special relationship of Armenia to international terrorists can be seen, for example, in the fact that the signatures of 1,227,473 nationals of that country were collected in defence of the Armenian terrorist Varujan Karapetyan, who was sentenced in France to life imprisonment for placing an explosive device near the office of the Turkish airlines at Orly airport. The sixth grade at a school in Irevan had already been named in his honour, and in Irevan and Ejmiatsin exhibitions of his paintings were organized.

Expressions of sympathy for terrorists by the highest political leadership in Armenia have included the appeal by the President of Armenia, Levon Ter-Petrossian, to the President of France, Jacques Chirac, for a pardon for V. Karapetyan, and the participation by the President of Armenia in the memorial service, attended by 50,000 people, for the well-known international terrorist Monte Melkonyan and his presence at the latter's funeral in Irevan.

Recently in Baku, the trial took place of 10 members of the terrorist organization Sadval, the aim of which is to seize by means of force the territory in the northern part of the Republic of Azerbaijan. During the investigation and trial, it was established that the Armenian secret service had cooperated in the establishment of Sadval and in providing funding and weapons for that organization and that the leaders of Sadval had repeatedly visited Irevan and had meetings with various State authorities in Armenia. It was also established that, with a view to carrying out subversive and terrorist acts in the territory of Azerbaijan, 17 terrorists of the Sadval organization had, in April 1992, undergone special subversive training at a training centre of the Ministry of Defence of Armenia located in the village of Lusokert in the Nairi district of Armenia. The court found the accused guilty and pronounced appropriate sentences on the members of Sadval for carrying out a terrorist act at the "20 January" metro station in Baku on 19 March 1994, as a result of which 14 people were killed and 42 sustained bodily injuries of varying degrees of severity.

It is no secret that there are close ties between the Armenian secret service and other known terrorist organizations responsible for killing thousands of innocent people, in particular the Kurdish Workers' Party, militant members of which, according to the information available, are undergoing training at bases made available to them in the territory of Armenia.

The many facts in the possession of the law-enforcement organs of Azerbaijan provide unconditional proof of Armenia's responsibility for the carrying out of terrorist activities against Azerbaijan and other States, its cooperation in the carrying out of such activities by various terrorist organizations and the assistance it has provided to such organizations by making its territory available to them for use as bases and training camps for the preparation and organization of terrorist acts against the States of the region. These facts thus provide sufficient grounds for including Armenia in the list of States, which supports terrorism at the State level.

In all, as a result of terrorist acts against Azerbaijan carried out since the late 1980s by the Armenian secret service and Armenian terrorist organizations closely connected with it, including terrorist acts on road, rail, sea and air transport and ground communications, over 2,000 peaceful citizens of Azerbaijan have been killed, the majority of them women, the elderly and children.