Azerbaijan walks out of francophone summit over distorted statements

Azerbaijani officials walked out of a francophone country summit hosted by Tunisia over distorted, provocative statements against Azerbaijan in a draft of the summit's declaration.

The Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry made the relevant statement on this in a reports posted on its website on November 18.

"During the Ministerial meeting within the framework of the ongoing Summit of the International Organisation of the Francophonie in Djerba, Tunisia on November 18, 2022, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Armenia, Ararat Mirzoyan, made a provocative statement full of distortions regarding the alleged anti-Azerbaijan positions by members of the Organisation.

"During the preparations for the Djerba Summit, with the direct support of France, one-sided, biased and distorted provocative provisions against Azerbaijan were included to the initial texts of the final documents of the Summit, namely the Djerba Declaration, and the draft resolution dedicated to crisis situations in the Francophone area, and were presented to the member states for discussion, Report informs citing the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry.

"However, as a result of the intervention of several member states during the discussion of the draft documents, the said provisions against our country were removed from the texts, and any wording directly targeting Azerbaijan were prevented in the drafts. Nevertheless, there are still certain elements in the final draft of the document that do not belong to the Organisation’s mandate, and provides a possibility of incitement of the political propaganda tools of Armenia.

"In the framework of document agreement process, additional political pressures and deterrence steps contrary to diplomatic practice were taken by France against the countries that objected to unilateral, biased and distorted provisions against Azerbaijan. Despite these pressures, during the Ministerial meeting of the International Organisation of the Francophonie held on November 18, 2022, some member states once again took the floor and declared that they objected to the relevant clauses of the draft resolution and did not agree to the adoption of the document.

"Still, it was reported that the draft document was approved for submission to the Summit, ignoring the objections, violating the decision-making procedures and disregarding the positions of the member states. At that point, the representatives protesting the decision left the conference hall.

"Taking of such steps, which are unprecedented in international multilateral platforms, and the gross violation of procedural rules have once again demonstrated that the International Organisation of the Francophonie is a political tool of France to put pressure on other countries, and this, undoubtedly will bring a serious damage to its reputation as an institution with a cultural profile.

"It is completely unacceptable to misuse an institution, which is managed under the influence of France and the main purpose of which is to promote the French language and culture worldwide, where Azerbaijan is not a member or an observer, for politically biased purposes and discussion of issues that are not related to its mandate.

"As a result of such disruptive activity of France, we consider the documents to be adopted at the Summit of the Francophone member states to be politically biased and irrelevant.

"Azerbaijani side expresses its gratitude to all the states that have demonstrated a position based on the norms and principles of international law in the document discussion process of the Summit," the ministry said.