Baku urges Yerevan to show political will for Azerbaijan-Armenia peace

POLITICS  28 June 2022 - 15:55

Baku has urged Armenia to show a political will if it wants peace with Azerbaijan.

The Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry press service made the statement in response to Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan's recent remarks on Armenian-Azerbaijani normalisation, which cast doubt on his country's desire to establish long-term regional peace.

"If Armenia really wants peace, it should demonstrate its political will and take specific steps toward peace, rather than wasting time reviving a format whose efficiency coefficient has always been low and whose inability to function is now openly acknowledged by its members," the ministry said on June 28. 

According to the ministry, the fact that the leader of the country, which held part of Azerbaijani territories under military occupation and destroyed them for about 30 years, accuses Baku of waging a blockade policy during those years does not fit into any legal or moral framework.

"We remind Prime Minister Pashinyan that, despite Armenia's occupation policy and 'destroy everything' approach for decades, Azerbaijan was a supporter and initiator of the normalisation of relations between the two states following the liberation of the territories. At the post-conflict stage, it was the Azerbaijani president who proposed signing a peace treaty based on strict adherence to international law principles. Azerbaijan even presented the opposite side with the fundamental principles upon which the [Peace] Agreement should be based. If Azerbaijan wanted war, as Pashinyan claims, these steps would not have been necessary. If Azerbaijan wanted war, it would not have made such large efforts to reclaim the territories Armenia had razed to the ground for 30 years," the ministry said.

It stressed that Azerbaijan not only makes statements in favour of delimitating the two countries' borders, opening all regional communications, and signing a future peace agreement between the parties but also follows through with actions and concrete steps.

"For many years, the Azerbaijani side believed that normalising relations in the region and opening all communications would be beneficial to Armenia. The fact that the Armenian side finally realised this and the prime minister stated that 'opening communications is beneficial to Armenia' attracts attention as a new approach by the Armenian leadership. Apparently, Armenia's decision-making will take some time. We hope that it will not take much time for Armenia to realise the effectiveness of the Zangazur corridor, which has already become a reality," the statement noted.

The ministry added "as for the trilateral statements, the parties' obligations in this document and their implementation are obvious. Armenia, grossly violating the requirements of the document, sending sabotage forces to Azerbaijani territories, not withdrawing illegal armed formations from Azerbaijani territories, and delaying the opening of communications for a long time, grossly violates the execution of these statements".

"The Armenian prime minister claims that 'the Azerbaijani side, in at least one case, boycotted the meeting', without elaborating. If we begin to list the meetings that have been proposed at the post-conflict stage with the participation of international mediators and were disrupted by Armenia under various pretexts, as well as postponed for 1-2 hours as a result of provocations, the list will become very long," the statement stressed.

Caliber.Az