The foreign ministries of Artsakh and Armenia were quick to respond to the State Department, whose spokesperson Matthew Miller, said the United States welcomed Azerbaijan’s “amnesty” offer to Artsakh’s leaders, after threatening more military attacks if they did not subject themselves to Baku’s rule.
President Ilham Aliyev of Azerbaijan, in a scathing address delivered on May 28 threatened Armenia and vowed more military aggression against Artsakh if its residents did not accept unconditional Azerbaijani rule.
“Everyone knows that we can carry out any [military] operation in that territory [Karabakh,]” Aliyev warned. “That is why the [Karabakh] parliament must be dissolved, the element who calls himself the president [of Karabakh] must surrender and all ministers, deputies and other officials must resign. Only then can there be talk of amnesty.”
During a press briefing Tuesday, Miller, while touting Yerevan and Baku for continuing peace talks, welcomed Aliyev’s threat-filled remarks by saying “we welcome President Aliyev’s recent remarks on consideration of amnesty.”
The Artsakh foreign ministry expressed disappointment and shock over Miller’s encouraging remarks about Aliyev’s brazen threats.
“It is inexplicable how in the Azerbaijani president’s statement — entirely built on overt blackmail and coercion — one can find anything positive that deserves encouragement,” said the Artsakh foreign ministry. “It is obvious that the main point of the Azerbaijani president’s statement was the rejection by Azerbaijan of an equal dialogue with the democratically elected authorities of the Republic of Artsakh and the desire to impose their own authority over the people of Artsakh by force.”
“We do not doubt the United States’s effort to play a positive role in achieving a just, balanced and dignified settlement of the Azerbaijan-Karabakh conflict and in establishing lasting peace in the region. At the same time, we believe that encouraging Baku’s destructive and belligerent policy runs counter to the desire to achieve a peaceful settlement of the conflict,” added the Artsakh foreign ministry.
“It is impossible to not notice that the statements made by the President of Azerbaijan on May 28 not only did not offer dignified solutions to problems, but also contained clear threats to the sovereignty and independence of the Republic of Armenia and the right of the people of Nagorno-Karabakh to live securely and with dignity in their homeland,” Armenia’s foreign ministry spokesperson Ani Badalyan said in a statement on Wednesday in response to Miller’s comments.
“We believe that the United States, based on its own values of democracy and protection of rights, as well as its commitment and involvement in the establishment of lasting peace in the region, should adequately respond to these statements in order to prevent the expansionist policy of the Azerbaijani leadership toward the sovereign territory of the Republic of Armenia and attempts of ethnic cleansing in Nagorno Karabakh,” Badalyan added.
“We believe it should be obvious to all our partners that in the process of normalization of relations between Armenia and Azerbaijan, both the recognition of each other’s territorial integrity and inviolability of borders based on the Alma-Ata Declaration and addressing the rights and security of the people of Nagorno Karabakh are key,” explained Badalyan.
She emphasized, however, that the recognition of Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity cannot be interpreted as “authority to carry out ethnic cleansing and arbitrary actions against the people of Nagorno-Karabakh.”
