Azerbaijan slams French leader’s ‘groundless, unacceptable’ Karabakh comments
BAKU, Azerbaijan (AA) – Azerbaijan has hit back at French leader Emmanuel Macron for his “false” and “unacceptable” comments on Baku’s conflict with Armenia.
“We strongly condemn and reject such statements. We do not see a possibility of France playing any role in normalization efforts between Azerbaijan and Armenia from now on,” Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev said in a speech at a regional summit in Kazakhstan’s capital Astana on Friday.
In a television interview earlier this week, Macron accused Baku and Russia of instigating deadly clashes on the Azerbaijan-Armenia border last month that claimed nearly 300 lives.
The flare-up was the worst since the 2020 conflict in which Azerbaijan liberated several cities and over 300 settlements and villages that were under Armenian occupation for decades.
The two former Soviet republics have had tense relations since 1991, when Armenia occupied Nagorno-Karabakh, also known as Upper Karabakh, a territory internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan.
Aliyev said the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe’s Minsk Group failed to achieve any positive outcome in 28 years of mediation between Azerbaijan and Armenia.
“The main purpose of this institution was not to resolve the conflict, but to freeze it. The negotiations were a disguise for the conflict to remain unresolved for years,”
“Azerbaijan resolved the conflict on its own, in accordance with international law, including Article 51 of the UN Charter, which states that every country has the right to self-defense,” he said.