Azerbaijan accuses France of "destabilizing" the Caucasus
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev has accused France of instigating a new war in the Caucasus by supplying arms to Baku's arch-enemy Armenia. France is "destabilizing" the region and pursuing a "militaristic policy by arming Armenia, encouraging revanchist forces in Armenia and preparing the ground for new wars in our region", the Azerbaijani head of state said at an international conference in Azerbaijan's capital Baku.
Armenia and neighboring Azerbaijan have been enemies for decades. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the two former Soviet republics in the Caucasus have been fighting over the region of Nagorno-Karabakh, which until recently was predominantly inhabited by ethnic Armenians and belongs to Azerbaijan under international law.
In September, Azerbaijan seized the region in a large-scale military offensive. Since then, almost all of the region's former 120,000 Armenian inhabitants have fled to Armenia.
Azerbaijan's President Aliyev and Armenia's Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan have already held several rounds of negotiations mediated by the EU. Both politicians have stated that a peace agreement could be signed in the coming months.
However, Azerbaijan recently rejected rounds of talks with Pashinyan in Spain and the USA. Baku justified the rejection of the talks in Spain with a "bias" on the part of France, which was supposed to mediate alongside the EU and Germany. Baku also rejected the talks in the USA, pointing out that Washington was "biased" and could therefore "forfeit its role as a mediator".
Source: www.ntv.de
