Azerbaijan is irate over a French mayor's visit to the breakaway Nagorno-Karabakh region.
The Foreign Ministry in Baku said the October 4-6 visit by the mayor of the French town of Bourg-les-Valence, Marlene Mourier, was a "provocation" ahead of a meeting between the presidents of Azerbaijan and Armenia in Paris later this month.
Ministry's spokesman Hikmat Hajiyev said the visit, and the signing of a Friendship Declaration between Bourg-les-Valence and the town of Shusha in Nagorno-Karabakh, ran "contrary to French laws and the mediation activity of France," which co-chairs international efforts to help Azerbaijan and Armenia resolve their conflict over the region.
Armenian-backed separatists seized the mainly Armenian-populated region from Azerbaijan during a war in the early 1990s that killed some 30,000 people.
Skirmishes along a 1994 cease-fire line claim lives every year.
Based on reporting by apa.az and Interfax
