YEREVAN, FEBRUARY 22, ARMENPRESS. The city council of the Italian city of Verona (Veneto Region) has unanimously expressed solidarity to the people of Artsakh and called on the Mayor to demand from Italian structures to officially recognize the independence of Artsakh.

“During the past months the peaceful population of Nagorno Karabakh became the victim of a horrendous armed conflict carried out by the Azerbaijani armed forces with support of the Turkish army and jihadist mercenaries,” said councilmember Alberto Zelger, one of the first to have signed the bill. Zelger stressed that the time has come to fulfill the right to self-determination of the people.

Another signatory, councilmember Vito Comencini, mentioned that Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s policy has become a serious destabilizing factor in the region.  He noted that a century after the Armenian Genocide, “new violence” was committed against the Armenian people. Comencini called for condemning the violence.

The bill also recommends introducing programs in cooperation with the education ministry and schools in Veneto that would enable comprehensive and detailed studies of the events that happened to the Armenian people.

Editing and Translating by Stepan Kocharyan