<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Just days before the first anniversary of the 44-day war, the Prime Minister of Armenia Nikol Pashinyan and the President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev clashed once again, this time in a bloodless confrontation via video at the United Nations General Assembly in New York City.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In my opinion, both Aliyev and Pashinyan made the mistake of not appearing in person at the UN meeting. The issue is not just the speech which they delivered by video, but their absence from an important international gathering of close to 200 leaders from around the world. This was an important opportunity, particularly for Armenia\u2019s Prime Minister, to rub shoulders with many of these leaders in private and public settings to transmit to them Armenia\u2019s grievances and publicize Azerbaijan\u2019s brutal violations during last year\u2019s war.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Fortunately, Pashinyan dispatched to the UN Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan who held several important meetings with his counterparts from many countries, including Azerbaijan, the Co-Chairs of the Minsk Group, and the Secretary General of the UN.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
While Armenia and Azerbaijan were not represented at the UN by their heads of state, Turkey was wisely represented by Pres. Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu who took advantage of the opportunity to meet with dozens of heads of state and inaugurate the new Turkish Center’s high-rise building across the UN headquarters which was attended by many dignitaries and UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres. Erdogan\u2019s only setback was the refusal of Pres. Biden to meet with him at the UN.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Turning to the speeches, Pres. Aliyev addressed the UN General Assembly on Sept. 23 delivering a 38-minute speech in English by video. Pashinyan\u2019s video speech was much shorter — it lasted less than 12 minutes. Aliyev\u2019s lengthy speech was not necessarily a good thing. He probably bored to death the dignitaries at the General Assembly who were listening to non-stop speeches day after day. Whereas it was smart of Aliyev to speak in English, Pashinyan, despite his knowledge of English, chose to speak in Armenian which means that the attendees had to listen to the translation of his speech via earphones, not the best way to communicate. Nevertheless, Pashinyan wisely used a teleprompter to read his speech which made it much more interesting to watch, versus Aliyev who was looking down the whole time, while reading the speech from a paper in front of him. This prompted a non-Armenian to comment sarcastically on YouTube, under the video of Aliyev\u2019s speech: \u201cWhat happened to Aliyev\u2019s petrodollars? Couldn\u2019t he afford to buy a teleprompter?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In his lengthy speech, Aliyev told dozens of lies:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
1) That Armenia, not Azerbaijan, started last September\u2019s war. Aliyev must have forgotten that he had previously admitted proudly that he started the war. He also accused Armenia of initiating an attack on Azerbaijan in July 2020. Armenia had no reason to start a war neither in July nor September 2020.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
2) Aliyev referred to the 12th century poet Nizami Ganjavi as \u201cthe great Azerbaijani poet.\u201d Ganjavi is in fact Persian, not Azeri (see Wikipedia\u2019s numerous sources). In the 12th century, Azerbaijan did not even exist. Ganjavi was born in Ganja (Kantzag in Armenian) which at the time was \u201cdensely populated with Iranians and a small number of Christians,\u201d according to Armenian historian Guiragos Kantzagetsi (1200 \u2013 1271).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
3) Aliyev falsely described Azerbaijan \u201cas an example of tolerance and peaceful coexistence of representatives of various religious and ethnic groups living in our country.\u201d On the contrary, Azerbaijan is a very intolerant and violent country. Its history is full of repeated massacres of Armenians. Yet, shamelessly, Aliyev accused Armenia of committing \u201cgenocide, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
4) Aliyev also accused Armenia of \u201cgross violation of international law, including the Geneva Convention.\u201d This is the exact description of Azerbaijan\u2019s own violations and crimes. He falsely claimed Armenia used \u201cwhite phosphorus and cluster munitions\u201d and attacked civilians. Once again, Aliyev was describing Azerbaijan\u2019s own war crimes against Armenian civilians, hospitals and churches.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
5) Aliyev also claimed that Armenia recruited \u201cmercenaries and foreign fighters from abroad.\u201d As is widely known, this is exactly what Azerbaijan did.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
6) Aliyev lied about Armenians engaging in \u201cthe full destruction of cities and villages, including the cultural and religious heritage sites of Azerbaijani people.\u201d The truth is the exact opposite.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
7) Aliyev claimed that Azerbaijan \u201cstarted taking legal actions against [foreign companies] for illegally exploiting our natural resources in the formerly occupied lands.\u201d Hopefully, these companies will countersue Azerbaijan for confiscating their properties.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
8) Indirectly admitting that Azerbaijan has encroached on the territory of Armenia, Aliyev boasted that \u201cthe country has been weakened to the extent that it cannot even guard its own borders by itself.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
9) Instead of respecting the agreement signed on Nov. 9, 2020 by Armenia, Azerbaijan and Russia, to release all prisoners of war, Aliyev demanded that Armenia \u201cprovide us with accurate mine maps of all liberated territories.\u201d There is no mention of such a requirement in the Nov. 9 agreement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
10) After telling all these lies and many others too numerous to mention, Aliyev has the audacity to urge Armenia to sign a \u201cpeace agreement \u2026 based on mutual recognition of sovereignty and territorial integrity of each other.\u201d He is thus pursuing a total abandonment of Artsakh by Armenia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Prime Minister Pashinyan delivered his speech at the UN on Sept. 24. He started by setting the record straight, stating that \u201cin the fall of 2020, Nagorno-Karabakh was subjected to aggression\u2026 [which] was accompanied by numerous gross violations of international law by the Azerbaijani armed forces, including deliberate targeting of civilians and vital infrastructure, extrajudicial killings of prisoners of war and civilian hostages, torture and many other documented crimes. As a result of these actions, in the parts of Nagorno-Karabakh, which came under the control of Azerbaijan, the Armenian people were subjected to complete ethnic cleansing.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Pashinyan went on to highlight Armenia\u2019s democratic credentials, vainly hoping that the international community will be impressed and take positive steps to protect the country against Azerbaijan\u2019s aggression. Armenia\u2019s Prime Minister also spoke of his country\u2019s readiness for peace with its neighbors, again hoping for support from UN member states. He does not seem to realize that the world does not care about such niceties. The only thing the world respects is strength.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Pashinyan next condemned Azerbaijan for holding Armenian prisoners of war as hostages in Baku and spoke about Azeri videos that show \u201cdecapitated bodies or shot bodies of these soldiers.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Pashinyan also mentioned \u201creopening transport links\u201d between Armenia and Azerbaijan. He naively added that \u201cif the railway connecting Armenia to Turkey is opened too, then the topic of opening regional communications will cover broader scope.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Prime Minister made one more pitch \u201cto resume the peace process for the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict under the auspices of the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs.\u201d Regrettably, this process has reached a dead end, as Aliyev claims to have solved the Artsakh issue by force and sees no need to engage in any further negotiations on this subject.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Pashinyan mentioned \u201cwith regret\u201d that Azerbaijan\u2019s forces crossed Armenia\u2019s borders on May 12, 2021 and have refused to leave. He suggested that both countries withdraw from \u201cthe Soviet times border\u201d and invite the deployment of \u201cinternational observers\u201d along the border. It is not clear why Armenia should withdraw from its own border!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Unfortunately, nice words do not mean much in realpolitik. The world believes only in power. While Azerbaijan and Turkey speak from a position of strength, Armenia is obliged to submit to the imposition of its more powerful and brutal enemies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Just days before the first anniversary of the 44-day war, the Prime Minister of Armenia Nikol Pashinyan and the President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev clashed once again, this time in a bloodless confrontation via video at the United Nations General Assembly in New York City. In my opinion, both Aliyev and Pashinyan made the mistake […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4101,"featured_media":774085,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3488],"tags":[6744,10286],"class_list":["post-731123","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-harut-sassounian","tag-ilham-aliyev","tag-nikol-pasinyan"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/731123","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4101"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=731123"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/731123\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/774085"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=731123"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=731123"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=731123"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/td> <\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"