Armenia seeks to conceal information about foreigners visiting the occupied Azerbaijani territories, Hikmat Hajiyev, spokesman for Azerbaijan’s Foreign Ministry, on June 6.

The so-called regime created by Armenia in Nagorno-Karabakh is using the method of not stamping the passports of foreign nationals visiting the occupied territories of Azerbaijan as well as some other methods, Hajiyev noted.

According to him, the Armenian side has resorted to this method in order to hide data pertaining to foreigners visiting the Armenian-occupied territories after Azerbaijan began to list such visitors as “undesirable persons.”

“The so-called regime used to apply a mechanism of issuing fake visas, which was deserted afterwards. Then they began not to stamp the passports of foreigners visiting the occupied territories. This method was deserted too,” the spokesman said. “Now they give a small sheet to foreigners visiting the occupied territories.

They do all they can to cover up the data about those foreigners.”

Hajiyev added that the trend following the application of the list of “undesirable persons” indicates the number of visitors has declined.

“In this respect, the awareness factor is worth mentioning. Azerbaijani diplomatic missions convey necessary information to public circles and local media in the countries where they operate,” he said noting that even foreign ministries of most countries are calling on their citizens to refrain from traveling to the occupied territories of Azerbaijan.

The spokesman added that following the escalation on the contact line of Armenian and Azerbaijani troops in April, Yerevan and the Armenian lobby in Europe began to attempt to organize visits of foreign media representatives to the occupied territories under various pretexts.

The main goal of such visits, according to Hajiyev, is to cover up the responsibility of Armenia for the violent developments in April and mislead the international community.

“However, we can note a positive trend that a number of international media outlets appealed to the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry for granting media representatives license allowing them to be engaged in legitimate journalistic activities in the country and visit the occupied territories. The Polish Public Television and a film crew of Ukrainian ICTV are among them.

In addition, Aljazeera Arabic and other international media agencies appealed to the ministry, Hajiyev said underlining that foreign media representatives wishing to cover the developments in the occupied Azerbaijani territories must first apply to the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry for accreditation.