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Last week, the nine leaders of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), composed of former Soviet Republics, met in Astana, Kazakhstan. In attendance were the President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev, the Prime Minister of Armenia Nikol Pashinyan and the heads of Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Russia, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At this meeting, the leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan confronted each other about the conflict between their countries in front of the other participants, primarily Russian President Vladimir Putin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Aliyev\u2019s remarks were full of falsehoods. He alleged that after the 2020 war, Armenia planted \u201c1,400 anti-personnel mines made in Armenia\u2026near the border with Lachin district in 2021. The roads leading from one Azerbaijani military position to another were also mined.\u201d He claimed that \u201cthe clashes, their active phase, lasted a maximum of eight hours,\u201d even though Azerbaijan continues violating the ceasefire to this day. He lied, saying that \u201cAzerbaijan had no intention of occupying the territory of Armenia, as some may assume.\u201d He ignored the fact that the Azeri army continues to remain inside Armenia\u2019s borders since its earlier incursion on May 12, 2021.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Aliyev tried to ingratiate himself to Putin, by claiming that \u201cAs a result of the mediation efforts of the Russian side, I would like to emphasize that it was the Russian side that came up with a ceasefire proposal. Some attribute this to other countries which is completely unfounded. As a result of the mediation efforts of the Russian side, the clashes, as I said, were stopped.\u201d Aliyev was thus contradicting reports that the United States brokered the ceasefire. He also acknowledged that Azerbaijan \u201cresolutely rejected\u201d the offer by the European Union to place a civilian mission on the Azerbaijani side of the border. \u201cTherefore, the mission will be located on the territory of Armenia,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Aliyev harshly criticized French President Emmanuel Macron who had made sympathetic remarks about Armenia. Aliyev complained that Macron \u201cmade insulting, unacceptable, false and provocative statements\u2026. He accused Azerbaijan of engaging in a horrific war\u2026.\u201d Once again, Aliyev tried to ingratiate himself to Putin by telling him that Micron made \u201cbiased statements\u2026against the Russian Federation, namely, that \u2018Russia played the Azerbaijani game.\u2019\u201d As a result, Aliyev said he rejected any future mediating role for France in the Karabagh conflict. He also complained about \u201canti-Azerbaijan statements\u201d made by the French foreign minister, the French Senate recognizing Karabagh, and a second resolution \u201cbeing prepared in the French Senate in mid-November.\u201d He blamed these developments on the influence of \u201cthe Armenian Diaspora in France.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Aliyev accused Armenia of organizing \u2018provocations\u2019 against the Embassies of Azerbaijan in France, Lebanon and the United States. He falsely claimed that: \u201cwe have no doubts that the acts of terror and vandalism were organized by Armenia. Why am I saying this? Because in the 1990\u2019s, Armenian special services carried out [in Azerbaijan] 32 terrorist acts — explosions in the subway, buses, ferries and trains. As a result of those heinous terrorist acts, more than 2,000 Azerbaijan civilians were killed!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Aliyev then tried to turn the Karabagh conflict into a religious war accusing Armenians of \u201cextreme degree of hatred for the Azerbaijani people and the entire Muslim world,\u201d forgetting that Armenia and Armenians enjoy the most cordial relations with many Islamic countries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Aliyev lied once again by claiming that Azerbaijan has fulfilled \u201call the provisions of the November 2020 agreement after the war.\u201d Dozens of Armenian prisoners of war remain in Baku jails, two years after the war. He also lied about Armenia not providing \u201cunhindered access from Azerbaijan to its exclave of Nakhichevan.\u201d However, Armenia repeatedly announced its readiness to provide such a road, while Azerbaijan has not reciprocated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Aliyev concluded his speech by stating that his \u2018patience\u2019 is \u2018not unlimited,\u2019 and threatened that unless he gets what he demands from Armenia, \u201cwe will be left with no other option but to act accordingly.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Prime Minister Pashinyan spoke next, countering Aliyev\u2019s lies. Calling Azerbaijan\u2019s September attack \u201can unprovoked military aggression against Armenia,\u201d Pashinyan condemned Azeri soldiers for committing war crimes by executing Armenian prisoners of war in contravention of the Geneva Convention.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Pashinyan also accused Azerbaijan of intending \u201cto occupy more territories of Armenia.\u201d He blamed \u201cthe inadequate response of the regional security organizations [Collective Security Treaty Organization] \u2026 which has caused very sharp questions in the Armenian society.\u201d He asked if the CSTO recognized the borders of the former Soviet Republics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Pashinyan said that Azerbaijan is only now demanding to know the fate of missing Azeri soldiers in the Karabagh war of 1990\u2019s, revealing that 777 Armenians are missing from that war and 217 from the 2020 war.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Pashinyan criticized Azerbaijan for falsely describing as \u2018corridor\u2019 the agreed upon road between Azerbaijan and Nakhichevan. He said that despite the fact that the 2020 agreement \u201cclearly mentions\u201d Karabagh, Azerbaijan claims that it \u201cdoes not exist.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Pashinyan also responded to Aliyev\u2019s false claim that Armenia had mined Azeri territories after the 2020 war. Pashinyan stated that \u201csuch mining has taken place entirely within the sovereign territory of the Republic of Armenia. And it is our right to take some security steps to protect the territorial integrity of our country.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Pashinyan also contradicted Aliyev\u2019s false claim that the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan was of religious nature. Pashinyan reiterated Armenia\u2019s close relations with many Muslim countries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Pashinyan denied that Armenia had organized any attacks on Azerbaijani embassies in foreign countries. Where is the evidence, he asked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Concluding his remarks, Pashinyan once again spoke about his baseless expectation of peace with Azerbaijan and Turkey, given their ongoing hostility toward Armenia. Peace cannot be achieved by one side while the other side is trying to kill you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
An enemy who is constantly attacking you and pointing a gun to your head cannot be considered a reliable partner for peace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Last week, the nine leaders of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), composed of former Soviet Republics, met in Astana, Kazakhstan. In attendance were the President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev, the Prime Minister of Armenia Nikol Pashinyan and the heads of Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Russia, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. At this meeting, the leaders of […]<\/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":[],"class_list":["post-760049","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-harut-sassounian"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/760049","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=760049"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/760049\/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=760049"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=760049"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=760049"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/td> <\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"