DUBLIN—Armenia’s Foreign Minister Eduard Nalbandian on Friday during a speech at the OSCE Ministerial Summit in the Irish capital, blasted Azerbaijan for ignoring the organization’s core principles and promoting hatred and violating human rights. He said Azerbaijan’s actions threaten the region’s stability.
Meanwhile, upon returning to Baku, Azeri Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov said that the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairmen are ineffective.
Speaking to journalists on his return to Baku on Friday, Mammadyarov claimed that Yerevan scuttled the planned adoption in Dublin of a joint statement by the Armenian and Azerbaijani foreign ministers and the U.S., Russian and French co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group. According to the Trend news agency, he complained that the co-chairs “did not display sufficient persistence on this issue,” reported RFE/RL.
In his remarks Nalbandian also said official Baku was the reason for the stalling of the Karabakh peace talks and expressed disappointment that the talks have been thwarted because what he termed as Azerbaijan’s unwillingness to cooperate.
“Many international organizations on human rights alerted about flagrant cases of racism, intolerance and violations of human rights in Azerbaijan, on the policy of hatred against Armenians,” said Nalbandian.
“Azerbaijan is not only ignoring the expectations of the international community, but is constantly making new steps going against the values of civilized world. The latest such case is the Azeri government’s release and glorification of the murderer Safarov, who had slaughtered with an axe Armenian officer in his sleep, during a NATO program in Budapest simply because he was Armenian. The Azerbaijani leadership made him a symbol of national pride and an example to follow by youth. The world reaction was unanimous in condemning what was done by Baku, which has seriously undermined the Nagorno-Karabakh negotiation process and endangered the fragile regional stability,” explained the foreign minister,” added Nalbandian.
“Azerbaijan poses a threat to the security of the region by constantly menacing to use force against Nagorno-Karabakh and Armenia along with daily war-mongering, by rejecting the proposals on the consolidation of the ceasefire, by systematic provocations and ceasefire violations, by ceaseless acts of vandalism towards the Armenian historical and cultural heritage,” outlined Nalbandian.
“Azerbaijani authorities are notorious for violations of fundamental freedoms in their own country, and are now trying to spread this behavior onto others. Their approach is – if a state is not recognized, then the people living there should be deprived of the human rights and fundamental freedoms. According to this logic, the people in the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic should not exercise the right to freedom of movement, be cured, get education, use drinking water and even give birth,” said the foreign minister.
Nalbandian said the while the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairmen are trying to mediate a conflict resolution, Azerbaijan is attempting to take the negotiations out of the current format “to replace the mediators, to denigrate Co-Chairs’ efforts to find a negotiated solution.”
On the sidelines of the summit, Nalbandian had a meeting with OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs Robert Bradtke, Igor Popov and Jacques Faure and the Personal Representative of the OSCE Chairman-in-Office Andrzej Kasprzyk. Issues related to the process of settlement of the Nagorno Karabakh conflict were discussed. An agreement was reached to organize a meeting of Armenian and Azerbaijani Foreign Ministers early in 2013.
It was announced that a meeting between Nalbandian and Mammadyarov would take place in January.
It threatens world stability!
Armenia’s Foreigne Minister i’s geting better and better, Bravo’ Nalbantian!