Armenia-Azerbaijan peace meeting called off over Yerevan’s insistence on involving France

ANKARA (AA) – A peace meeting planned next month between Azerbaijan and Armenia has been called off over Armenia’s insistence on involving France, Azerbaijan’s president has announced.

The December 7 meeting with Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan in Brussels will not be held, said Ilham Aliyev, addressing a conference in the capital Baku.

According to Aliyev, Pashinyan had said that Armenia would take part in the meeting only if French President Emmanuel Macron also took part in the talks, an insistence Aliyev called “an attempt to disrupt the peace talks.”

Aliyev said that Hikmet Hajiyev, his assistant and foreign policy chief, had earlier told him that they had a call from the office of European Council President Charles Michel conveying Pashinyan’s request for Macron to be involved in the meeting.

Aliyev said that Macron had criticized Azerbaijan in an interview, accusing it “of things we didn’t commit.”

“Later, the completely unacceptable and insulting bill of the French Senate was passed,” he said, adding that the French National Assembly is expected to “adopt another anti-Azerbaijani bill.”

Last week, Azerbaijan rebuffed a French Senate resolution calling for sanctions against Baku and its withdrawal from territory liberated from Armenian occupation in 2020.

“Then there was the French attempt to attack us through the Francophonie Summit (in Tunisia). This is unacceptable because Francophonie is a humanitarian organization,” he added.

Last week, Azerbaijani officials walked out of the francophone country summit over “distorted, provocative statements” against Baku in a draft of the summit’s declaration.

Pointing out that a preliminary version of the French bill, “prepared jointly by France and Armenia,” is “full of accusations and fabrications,” Aliyev said this clear bias makes Paris’ involvement in the talks impossible.

Aliyev said that Yerevan’s request for French participation at the talks “means that the December 7 meeting will not take place” and that Baku will consider “other alternatives.”

“Let’s see who will take the role of mediator and on what platform it will take place,” he added.

Relations between the two former Soviet republics of Armenia and Azerbaijan have been tense since 1991, when the Armenian military occupied Nagorno-Karabakh, a territory internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan.

In fall 2020, Baku liberated several cities, villages, and settlements from Armenian occupation.