YEREVAN, MARCH 18, ARTSAKHPRESS. The Foreign Ministry of Armenia responded to the statements made by Azerbaijani president Ilham Aliyev on March 18.
ARMENPRESS reports, the statement of the MFA Armenia reads as follows,
“There will be no peace treaty” – this is a quote from the speech of the president of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev on March 18, 2023.
Aliyev made this statement in the Talish village of Nagorno-Karabakh, which was depopulated as a result of the 44-day war.
In Talish, as well as in other regions depopulated as a result of the 44-day war, Azerbaijan is openly implementing resettlement programs in an attempt to eliminate the Armenian trace from the territories of Nagorno-Karabakh that have passed under its control. At the beginning of the 90s, Shahumyan region, Getashen sub-region, and other settlements with a large Armenian population also suffered a similar fate.
The above-mentioned actions of Azerbaijan are in direct contradiction to point 7 of the trilateral declaration of November 9, 2020, according to which internally displaced persons and refugees return to the Nagorno-Karabakh territory and adjacent regions under the supervision of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
With the policy of illegal resettlement and the practice of terrorizing the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh, official Baku is doing everything to make the fulfillment of the above-mentioned provision of the trilateral declaration impossible.
Azerbaijan is doing everything to make peace in the region impossible. The leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan adopted statements on October 6, 2022 in Prague and on October 31 in Sochi, according to which Armenia and Azerbaijan recognize each other’s territorial integrity and sovereignty based on the UN Charter and the Alma-Ata Declaration of 1991, and the delimitation process between the two countries should take place exclusively on this basis. Despite this, on March 18, the president of Azerbaijan again announced that the border delimitation should take place under the conditions set by Azerbaijan and has been continuously talking about some kind of historical maps for a long time.
Azerbaijan not only keeps under occupation the sovereign territories of the Republic of Armenia illegally seized on May 12 and November 17, 2021, and September 2022, but also introduced the so-called “Western Azerbaijan” discourse and declares practically the entire territory of the Republic of Armenia an Azerbaijani territory.
This is an open expression of aspirations towards practically the entire sovereign territory of the Republic of Armenia. Azerbaijan also threatens Armenia if the latter does not submit to these aspirations.
Azerbaijan continues the gross violations of the trilateral and quadrilateral declarations adopted in various formats, and in practice there is not a single provision of these declarations that Azerbaijan has not violated, starting with the illegal closure of the Lachin Corridor, and continuing to keep Armenian prisoners, hostages, and other detained persons in illegal detention until today, and ending with obstructing the opening of regional communications with groundless “corridor” talk.
Moreover, the president of Azerbaijan has violated the commitment he made on February 18, 2023, which is about discussing the issue of the rights and guarantees with the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh.
Just a few weeks after that announcement, Azerbaijan announced that it is planning to discuss the issue of “integration of the Armenians of Karabakh”, while the statements made in Talish, the illegal blockade of the Lachin Corridor, the terrorist attack on March 5 prove that Azerbaijan intends to resolve the issue of the assimilation of the Armenians of Nagorno Karabakh at minimum, and Armenia’s alarms about official Baku’s preparations to subject the Nagorno-Karabakh Armenians to genocide should not be ignored by the international community.
In the discourse of the latest period, Azerbaijan found a new accusation against the Republic of Armenia, accusing it of being mono-ethnic and trying to create the impression that, unlike Armenia, Azerbaijan is a multi-ethnic country. According to the Constitution of the Republic of Armenia, 4 national minorities have a mandate in the highest legislative power of the country, while there is nothing like that in Azerbaijan, which considers itself multinational.
The assessment of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Armenia is unequivocal. With its aggressive rhetoric and actions, Azerbaijan sees preparations to subject the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh to genocide and launch a renewed aggression against Armenia.
In the existing situation, it is necessary to launch the international mechanisms for the prevention of genocides, send an international fact-finding mission to the Lachin Corridor and Nagorno-Karabakh, as well as to directly condemn Azerbaijan’s aggressive actions and policies. At the same time, the Republic of Armenia expresses its commitment to the peace agenda on the basis of the trilateral statements of November 9, 2020, January 11, 2021, October 31, 2022 and the quadrilateral statement of October 6, 2022″.
