The history of Karabakh, part of the Azerbaijani Republic, which includes Daglyg (montainous) and Aran (low-land) Karabakh, is deeply rooted in antiquity. Karabakh has always been an integral part of all state formations of Azerbaijan.

For a long period, the territory of Karabakh was part of a state in northern Azerbaijan – the kingdom of Caucasian Albania (not to be confused with Albania in the Balkans) which emerged in the 4th century BC and censed to exit in the 8th century AD. Later it was continuously part of other state formations ruled by dinasties of Azerbaijan, namely the Sajids (9th to 10th c.c.), the Salarids (10th century), the Shaddadids (10th-11th c.c.), the Atabey-Ildanizds (12th-13th c.c.), the Jalairis (14th-15th), the Gara-Goyunlu (15th century), the Aghgoyunlu (15th-16th c.c.), the Safavids (16th-17th c.c.) as well as foreign empires, which included the territory Azerbaijan like Arab Caliphate (8th-9th c.c.), Great Saljuks (11th-12th), Mongol Hulakis (13th-14th), and the Gajars (18th-19th c.c.).It is worth mentioning here, as an instance of the subordinate relationship between local rules and their sovereigns, that in the 15th century Jahan shah of the Gara-Goyunlu dynasty, gave, Hasan Jalal’s dynasty rulers of Karabakh, the title of melik (from the Arabic for owner, lord, possessor of ruler).

Different faith and different political powers competed in the formation of the Azerbaijani nations. At the time of the adaptation of Christianity in Azerbaijan in the 4th AD, Azerbaijan was a multi-ethnic and multi-confessional environment. Until the 4th century the population of Caucasian Albania, being ethnically Azerbaijani, professed a religion of fire-worship, which consequently spread to Iran and developed into Zoroastrianism. Over the course of the historical development of Azerbaijan, Christianity and Islam prevailed at different times and, consequently, there were several splits within the Azerbaijani ethnos. When Caucasian Albania adopted Christianity (AD 313) as the state religion, some of the Azerbaijanis who refused to become Christians continued to worship fire. The chasm deepened when a considerable part of the population began to practise Islam. However, the autocephalic Albanian Church, founded in the 6th to 7th centuries AD, continued to exist until its abolition in 1836 by the Russian Tsarist government.

The Russian empire, acting in its own interests, used religion to gain influence in the region. To this end it abolished the independent Albania Church, subordinated the Albanian Patriarchate to the Armenian Gregorian Church, which grew from 1441 onwards after the Azerbaijani Gara-Goyunlu dynasty desided to allow to move the seat of the Armenian Patriarchane from Cilicia to Echmiadzin, near Iravan (original Azerbaijani pronunciation of the capital of the independent Azerbaijani Irevan, Khanate, conquered by the Russian empire, Yerevan in the present day). The Christian population of Albania was gradually forced into joining the Armenian Church.

Even when the local Caucasian Albanians of Karabakh embraced the Armenian Gregorian, some remained defiant and migrated to the left bank of the Kuraa River – their descendants still live in the village of Nij, north Azerbaijan.
In 1909 and 1910 the Russian authorities connived with the Armenian Church to destroy Albanian archives, including samples of Caucasus Albanian literature.The Russian historian V.L.Velichko deplored these actions in both Albania and Georgia, which had something of a similar experience.

From the 18th century onwards the Armenians gained an ally. Russia, which used them in its rivalry with the Ottoman and Persian empires. To insure the success of its policy in the region, paying scant regards to the indigenous population’s right to their own lands. Russia endeavored to remove the indigenous inhabitants from their homes, particularly in the Azerbaijani provinces of Karabakh and Zangezur. By 1805 Russia was engaged in negotiations with the war-weary local rules, particularly Ibrahim Khalil-Khan, the khan (lord) of the Azerbaijani independent Karabakh khanate (with the capital Shusha fortress named "Panahabad"), and also with the lord of the Sheki and Shamakhi khanates. Through military conquest, Russia annexed the rest of the local Azerbaijani principalities of Lenkoran, Baku, Guba, Ganja, Derbend and, in 1826, the Azerbaijani khanates of Nakhchivan and Irevan. Consequently, Russia had an interest in establishing a fellow Christian population of Armenians on the border of its empire, as a buffer against the local Azerbaijani khanates struggling to maintain their independence.

In 1828-30 alone, in accordance with the Treaty of Turkmenchay, the Russian imperial government settled about 130000 Armenians from Iran and Turkey in the territories of the Azerbaijani khanates, including more than 50000 in Karabakh. When Russia conquered the South Caucasus, the notion of "Armenia" was not linked with a political, integral entity. Armenians were simply knows as a Christian community among the Muslim majority within Azerbaijani states. Following the Treaty of Turkmenchay, however, Russia created a new administrative unit and called it the "Armenian oblast", despite the Azerbaijanians constituting the majority. It included the Irevan, Nakhchivan and Ordubad districts of Azerbaijan. The "Armenian oblast" was abolished in 1849 and replaced with the Irevan Governorate, in accordance with the structure of the administrative-territorial divisions within the Russian empire.

From the 19th century onwards the Armenians, despite their military and political weakness, tried to set a political agenda of their own (with the ultimate goal of creating an independent Armenian state) and to gain their utmost from the rivalry of the Great Powers in Anatolia and the South Caucasus. Between the Congress of Berlin and the San Stefano Conference in 1878 and the outbreak of World War I in 1914, the emergence of the "Armenian Question" gave rise to conflict. During than time, 500000 Armenians were resettled with Russian acquiescence from Iran and Turkey on the historical lands of Azerbaijan.The ambitions of Armenian ultra-nationalists intent on creating their own state at the expense of Azerbaijan played into the hands of the Russian overlords, creating a coincidence of interests. These shared policies continued into the Soviet period.

The February and October Revolutions of 1917 in Russia marked a new stage in the "Armenian Question". In October 1917 the Armenian Congress convened in Tiflis (now Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia) and demanded the annexation by Russia of Eastern Turkey, occupied by the Russian Army during World War I. On 31 December of the same year, the Council of People’s Commissars adopted a decree, signed by Lenin and Stalin, on the right to self-determination of "Turkish Armenia".
On 28 May 1918, the first democratic state in the Muslim world namely Azerbaijani Republic, was established. One of the first step taken by the government of the new country was to yield of the following day, 29 May 1918, the city of Irevan (as state earlier, the capital of the former Azerbaijani Irevan khanate) to the Republic of Armenia, which had declared its independence one day prior to Azerbaijan, on 27 May 1918, but which as yet had no political center. The territory of the republic of Armenia at the time was limited to Echmiadzin, Alexandropol and pats of New Bayazids and Irevan uezds both with 50 per cent Azerbaijani populations.

Nevertheless, the Armenian government, led by the Dashnak party (the Dashnaksutyun), claimed from Azerbaijan the territories of Nakhchivan, Zangezur and Karabakh, and this led to the war between Azerbaijan and Armenia of 1918-1920. Thousands of Azerbaijanis were killed on the battlefield as well as during the massacres committed by Dashnak-led Armenians and Bolsheviks in nearly all the main towns of Azerbaijan. This conflict seriously undermined the struggle of Azerbaijan and the other states of the region to maintain their independence and sovereignty.The Dashnak Armenian government continued to wage war in the same areas of Karabakh, Nakhchivan and Zangezur until November 1920, when the entire Dashnak government was overthrown by Soviet Russia. This did not, however, lead to a solution of the territorial dispute.

The Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic continued to press the same territorial claims as its predecessors. Responding to these demands, the Caucasus Bureau of the Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party decided at its meeting of 5 July 1921 that: "Taking into consideration the necessity of national peace between the Muslims and the Armenians, the importance of the economic relations between Upper and Lower Karabakh and the permanent relations of Upper Karabakh with Azerbaijan, Nagorno-Karabakh shall be retained within the boundaries of the Soviet- Socialist Republic of Azerbaijan and broad autonomy shall be given to Nagorno-Karabakh with Shusha city as an administrative centre. In 1922 the Azerbaijani Soviet Socialist Republic was absorbed into the USSR.

By a decision of July 1923, the Soviet Azerbaijan Central Executive Committee created for Mountainous Karabakh the status of Autonomous Region, the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast, (NKAO), a legal entity within the Azerbaijani SSR. The administrative centre of the NKAO was moved from Shusha to Khankendi (whose name was changed to "Stepanakert'' later in the same year by Armenians to honour Stepan Shaumian, Armenian Bolshevik). The administrative lines of "Nagorno Karabakh" were drawn artificially so as to ensure an Armenian majority in this ethnically mixed region. Official Tsarist population records indicate that the population of Karabakh, was overwhelmingly of Armenians (numbering more than 50, 000) from Iran as provided for in the treaty of Turkmenchay which ended the Russian-Persian War of 1826-28. Armenian majority emerged by this way was used as the basis for the artificial creation of an Armenian entity.

The policy of the Soviet Union was far from even-handed. Several points have to be made here. For example, in contrast with the NKAO and its 138,600 Armenian and 47.500 Azerbaijani population (1989), neither the central government of die USSR nor the Armenian SSR had ever considered the possibility of granting even some status of cultural autonomy to the 300,000 Azerbaijanis residing compactly in Armenia (given the fact, that Azerbaijan's population at the same time, was seven million in comparison to Armenian's three million). Moreover, many of them were forcibly deported from Armenia, particularly in 1948-50. Ethnic cleansing of all Azerbaijanis from Armenia finalized in 1988-89.

It also has to be mentioned here that the Bolsheviks did not return to Azerbaijan the territories lost in previous battles. In 1921 the Soviet government legalized Armenian’s hold of Zangezur, thus driving a wedge between the Azerbaijani SSR mainland and its province Nakhchivan. From then on, Nakhchivan was isolated. The following year; in 1922, Dilijan and Geycha were also transferred from Azerbaijan to the Armenian SSR. A nuraber of villages were also transferred to Armenia without reciprocity from Nakhchivan in l929, from Gedebay in I969 and, as late as 1984, from the Gazakh district. During the Soviet period, as a result of land transfers from Azerbaijan to Armenia the territory of Azerbaijan shrank from 97,300 sq/km in (1920 (while still independent) to 86,600 sq/km in 1988 under the Soviet Union.

Armenian expansionist ambitions, so skillfully explored by the central authorities in Moscow to create havoc in the regions, eventually led in the late 1980s to the terrible aggressions and calamity, which has blighted to the whole area for more than a decide. One in the eight Azerbaijanis is now a refugee or displaced person, driven from Mountainous Karabakh or from their homes elsewhere in surrounding areas or from Armenia. Besides in 1992-3 the Armenians, having occupied Mountainous Karabakh (consisted of the former Nagorno-Karabakh autonomous oblast) and seven surrounding Azerbaijani regions, committed unprecedented atrocities in these territories and carried out ethnic cleansing. Neither history nor oppression can justify the Armenian territorial claims, which led to the conflict. The government of Azerbaijan is therefore, committed to seeking a peaceful solution to the tragic conflict and to the elimination of all its consequences including, first of all, withdrawal from all the occupied territories and the return of the Azerbaijani population to their home.

The conflict was escalated by Russia's political and military support of Armenia. Since 1993, Armenia has received $1 billion in arms shipments from Russia. These arms, including the most modern Russian tanks, armored personnel carriers, SCUD missiles and tons of ammunition, were shipped through Armenia to the site of the conflict inside Azerbaijan.

A series of Armenian offensives, beginning in 1992, resulted in the Armenian occupation of almost 20 percent of Azerbaijan territory, including Nagorno-Karabakh and seven other districts. As a result, Azerbaijan is left with approximately 1 million refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs) - who were forced to flee for their lives.

Nagorno-Karabakh is an enclave inside Azerbaijan, and has no bender with Armenia. Before the conflict started, Armenia deported some 200,000 Azerbaijanis from Armenia. Then it occupied the whole territory of Nagomo-Karabaih and surrounding seven regions and, in effect has annexed Nagorno-Karabakh and this territory to Armenia. In the process all Azerbaijanis previously living in these regions which belong lo Azerbaijan were forced to flee for their lives.

It might be noted that, even the Nazis allowed inhabitants, of their occupied territories to stay and live there. But Armenians have rid Azerbaijanis from the entire occupied territories. Khojaly, a small Azerbaijani town in Nagorno-Karabakh, is, a sad example of genocide, when in 26 February 1992 overnight the whole town was destroyed, more than 700 innocent civilians, including many women and children were murdered and others were forcefully deported. The President of Azerbaijan has subsequently declared March 31 as the Day of Genocide of Azerbaijanis in commemoration of those occasion and other earlier tragic massacres.

A cease-fire was negotiated in May 1994. but all attempts to negotiate a settlement have failed. The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) began its mediation efforts in 1992, and in 1996 at a summit meeting in Lisbon, 53 out of 54 member states of the OSCE endorsed a statement of three principles upon which the conflict should be settled. Armenia was the only country that refused to support the statement because it supported the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan and Armenia (meaning that the original borders from the Soviet period must remain intact).

In 1996, the OSCE appointed three co-chairs to its Minsk Conference - the United States, Russia and France. The Minsk Conference is charged with the responsibility of negotiating peace in this region. These co-chairs then developed a two-staged peace proposal: (1) withdrawal of Armenian forces from all regions of Azerbaijan except Nagorno-Karabakh; and (2) negotiations on the final status of Nagorno-Karabakh (as an entity) within Azerbaijan. This proposal was accepted by Azerbaijan and by Armenian President Levon Ter-Petrossian. However, it was opposed by hard-line elements within Armenia and ethnic Armenians within Nagorno-Karabakh. As a result, president Ter-Petrossian was forced from office replaced by hard-line elements. Now the peace process is up in the air again. Azerbaijan remains committed to a peaceful solution based on the following Lisbon principles:

1)Recognition of territorial integrity of the Republic of Azerbaijani and the Republic of Armenia;
2)Azerbaijan will grant the highest level of self-rule to Nagorno-Karabakh;
3)Security guarantees will be provided to the entire population of Nagorno- Karabakh (meaning that Azerbaijanis could return home to their lands safely but that Armenians would
also be protected as residents there.)

After the cease-fire was declared up to now issue of Nagorno-Karabakh was discussed more than once on the levels of either Ministers of Foreign Affairs or Presidents of Azerbaijan and Armenia. The UN Security Council condemned the Armenian invasion and occupation of Azerbaijan's territories, making its position clear and unambiguous by passing four resolutions, which addressed Armenian aggression - resolutions 822,853,874, and 884. None of these resolutions, demanding unconditionally withdrawal of armenian occupation troops front territories of Azerbaijan has been implemented. Negotiations between Azerbaijan and Armenia still go on by mediation of co-chairmen of OSCE Minsk Group. Azerbaijan is for solving this conflict on the basis of legal regulations and in the framework of territorial integrity of Azerbaijan, and for providing armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh with the highest autonomy which have ever been in world practice, inside Azerbaijan.

Next stage of negotiation; between Azerbaijan and Armenia was held on 14 November 2006 in Brussels. Ministers of Foreign Affairs of both countries discussed solution of Nagorno-Karabakh problem.