An article by RFE/RL correspondent Joshua Kucera about the peace process between Armenia and Azerbaijan points out that due to the lack of trust of the parties in various mediators, Baku and Irevan have been increasingly favoring the format of direct bilateral contacts, which have already begun to yield concrete results. Specifically, the article refer to the agreement reached last December on the release of detainees from both sides and mutual diplomatic support in the context of the international COP29 climate conference to be hosted by Baku.
“Armenia and Azerbaijan are grown-up enough to tackle the remaining issues by themselves,” Elchin Amirbayov stressed, addressing the prevailing opinion that the peace treaty process risks turning into a theater of geopolitical competition between the two rival blocs as a result of meddlesome involvement of major external players.
In this context, the envoy called “complete nonsense” the recent statement by the head of European diplomacy Josep Borrell, who mentioned Azerbaijan’s territorial claims against Armenia and called on Baku to return to substantive negotiations with Irevan.
“The accusations against Azerbaijan about our alleged territorial claims to Armenia are nothing but an unsuccessful and useless ploy to ploy to draw attention away from Armenia’s own claims on Azerbaijan. Suffice it to look at the current Constitution of Armenia and its reference to the declaration of independence of this country, which enshrines an arbitrary and illegitimate decision on the so-called ‘reunification of the Armenian SSR with Nagorno-Karabakh’,” Amirbayov said.
“There are a lot of such facts; take, for example, the reservations adopted by the Armenian parliament in the process of ratifying Armenia’s accession to the CIS, which question Karabakh’s belonging to Azerbaijan, or the numerous lawsuits filed by Armenia against Azerbaijan after the end of the 44-day war, the documents that contain overt territorial claims against Azerbaijan. Not to mention the official website of the Armenian Foreign Ministry, which still presents the Karabakh region of Azerbaijan as an integral part of historical Armenia.
“We have repeatedly brought all our above-mentioned concerns to the attention of the Armenian side, but, unfortunately, no concrete actions have been taken by them so far to address them. The deliberate spreading of ridiculous rumors about the impending Azerbaijani threat, while maintaining territorial claims against Azerbaijan, is not only trickery but also a road to nowhere,” the President’s Representative for Special Assignments concluded.
