‘Armenophobia is Aliyev’s Last Line of Defense,’ Says Yerevan

“Armenophobia is Aliyev’s last line of defense,” Armenia’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Anna Naghdalyan said on Thursday. The comment comes after Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, in an interview broadcast Monday, lambasted Armenia and the Armenian Nation, decried the Karabakh peace process and criticized the efforts of the Minsk Group co-chairs as
“meaningless.”

“Aliyev has no other words to say to his society in lockdown than bringing forward the image of ‘useful enemy,’” said Naghdalyan.
“It is ridiculous that Armenia’s domestic processes, human rights and freedoms are being chided by the leader of a country where for decades political and economic power has been in the hands of a single family, defined internationally as a repressive regime,” added Naghdalyan in response to a reporter’s question.

“It is noteworthy that Ilham Aliyev, with his hostile and racist comments, expresses an irresponsible and disrespectful attitude, first of all, toward the statement of the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs issued a week ago, which contained concerns about the inflammatory and provocative rhetoric [Azerbaijan is using],” she said.

“As Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan stated at the recent joint session of the Security Councils of Armenia and Artsakh, attempts to turn the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict into a long-term Armenian-Azerbaijani enmity within which our peoples’ will fight on everything – past, present, future and the whole region – is in the interest of neither the Armenian nor the Azerbaijani people,” she stated.