Armenia not ready for peace
And Envoy Balayan’s Brussels lies

ANALYTICS  09 October 2023 - 14:40

Armenian Ambassador to the European Union Tigran Balayan has said that his country expects an invasion by Azerbaijan in the next few weeks, writes Brussels Signal. “Following the capitulation of Nagorno-Karabakh [Garabagh], Azerbaijan will attack Armenia itself,” Balayan vows.

He also said that Azerbaijan’s promises to respect international law are empty. “We are now under the imminent threat of invasion of Armenia,” the Armenian diplomat deliberately repeats the lie. According to him, the main problem of the current situation in the region is that Azerbaijan “has not yet faced any concrete consequences of its expansionist plans.” And finally, he shared his main phobia. Saying that Azerbaijan intends to achieve more, he emphasized that “the matter is the Zangezur corridor, which separates Azerbaijan from the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic.”

According to Balayan, the EU should set a deadline for Baku “to withdraw its army from the border region of Armenia and suspend the agreement on a visa-free regime between Azerbaijan and the EU if it does not comply with it.”

In general, Tigran was carried away. Everything he said is primitive and easily refuted misinformation. Let's say, words about a possible “invasion of Azerbaijan.” Tigran might as well have said that he was perhaps eight months pregnant. That is, in both the first and second cases there was a calculation for the resonance of the statement and the hype it caused. The main thing is that loud declarations will somehow attract attention to the author of the “sensation”. It doesn’t matter to Balayan whether there will be an effect...

The policy of official Yerevan today is aimed at keeping the topics of “a possible attack by Azerbaijan on Armenia” and “the fate of the Armenians who left Garabagh” on the agenda by any means possible. Those who left under the influence of Yerevan propaganda, despite security guarantees from official Baku. Yerevan needs all this for its “political roof,” the role of which the West must now play, and to extort more money from its European patrons.

His phrase that Azerbaijan’s promises to respect international law are empty sounds especially ridiculous. For it was Armenia that kept 20 per cent of the territory of our country under occupation for more than a quarter of a century, ignoring the resolutions of the UN, PACE, and CE, which recognized the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan and stipulated the requirement for the withdrawal of Armenian armed forces from the occupied territories.

In this regard, it is also appropriate to recall that at a recent meeting in Granada, Prime Minister of the Republic of Nikol Pashinyan signed a document recognizing the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan, including the Garabagh economic region. This was a forced measure on his part against the backdrop of Azerbaijan’s successful implementation of counter-terrorism measures in Karabakh, the announcement by the local junta of self-liquidation and the further arrest of its former leaders.

But despite the document signed by Pashinyan, 8 Azerbaijani villages are still under Armenian occupation. The head of our state reminded us of this the other day in a telephone conversation with the President of the European Council, Charles Michel. That is, this statement by official Yerevan is nothing more than worthless empty talk. Suffice it to remember that Pashinyan once shouted that “Garabagh is Armenia, period.” And now, after Azerbaijan has implemented military-diplomatic measures, it repeats at every opportunity that Garabagh is Azerbaijan.

Besides, last week, a foundation laying ceremony for a road bridge between Azerbaijan and Iran took place in Zangilan, near the village and border post of Aghband. The event was attended by Deputy Prime Minister, Co-Chairman of the State Commission on Cooperation in Economic, Trade and Humanitarian Spheres between Azerbaijan and Iran Shahin Mustafayev and Minister of Roads and Urban Development of Iran, Co-Chairman of the Commission from Iran Mehrdad Bazrpash.

The new bridge will become part of the communications between the main territory of Azerbaijan and Nakhchivan with subsequent access to Türkiye. Armenia again remained on the sidelines of a global project that could bring it out of self-isolation. Precisely self-isolation, because at the very beginning of the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict in Yerevan they chose the tactics of blocking communications and the railway blockade of Nakhchivan. So, the demagoguery and manipulations from Balayan regarding the Zangezur corridor have nothing to do with reality.

Well, one last thing. “Now the issue of peace is on the agenda. If Armenia wants peace, we will achieve it. Because we have no territorial claims against Armenia. And we don’t want them to have territorial claims against Azerbaijan,” Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev said in an interview with Euronews TV channel. And this is the word of an authoritative politician, a word that has always been, is and will be equivalent to his official signature.

Moreover, just yesterday, in a joint press statement with Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili in Tbilisi, the head of our state made a number of important clarifications. “Three years ago, as a result of the Second Garabagh War, Azerbaijan restored its territorial integrity, and last month it restored its sovereignty over the entire country. And now we must actively work on a peace treaty to be signed between Armenia and Azerbaijan. If we achieve this - I hope so - then a completely new political situation will arise in the South Caucasus,” the president of Azerbaijan promised.

According to him, official Baku is ready to sign a peace treaty with Armenia, proposing a new format for this. “If it is not one-sided and not biased, then, of course, we accept any mediation and assistance. But, I think the most correct choice in this area, taking into account both historical ties and the geographical factor, of course, could be Georgia,” the head of our state emphasized.

Here we go. A clear, fair and specific position of official Baku was voiced. From the representatives of Yerevan, we hear only the already familiar nonsense. And it doesn’t matter who voices it - Tigran Balayan or Nikol Pashinyan. The main thing here is that Azerbaijan is ready for peace, but Armenia is not.

Caliber.Az