British media are reporting that Armenia’s Embassy in the United Kingdom is seeking clarification from the UK Foreign office after its foreign secretary, David Lammy, posted in a blog that Azerbaijan was able to “liberate” Nagorno-Karabakh.
The Foreign Secretary’s view that the Nagorno-Karabakh region has been “liberated” stands in contrast to the official stance of the British government, the Financial Times reported.
Lammy, who made the comment on his personal blog on the Substack website on Monday, days before the one-year anniversary of the forced depopulation of Artsakh Armenians from their ancestral lands, was slammed as “callous and ignorant” by GB News, which first reported on the matter.
Conservative member of the British Parliament, Alicia Kearns, former chair of the House of Commons foreign affairs committee, said on X that Lammy’s comments, on what she called a “vanity blog,” appeared to be “contradicting long-standing UK policy” in a way that was “totally inappropriate and throws into question the foreign secretary’s judgment.”
“David Lammy needs to urgently clarify the Government’s policy on Nagorno-Karabakh. This is a serious matter – over 100,000 people have been displaced from their homes,” Kearns added in her post.
The Foreign Office was forced to clarify on Friday that Lammy’s comment did not mark a change in the UK government’s stance on Nagorno-Karabakh, which has been to urge Azerbaijan and Armenia to engage in negotiations to end the conflict.
An Armenian official told the Financial Times on Friday that the Armenian government is seeking clarification from the UK after Lammy’s post.
Representative Brad Sherman (D-Calif.) also weighed in on the matter in a post on X, saying the remarks were “a stain on UK foreign policy,” as he accused the UK foreign secretary of having “endorsed ethnic cleansing.”
After Azerbaijan’s September 2023 attack on Artsakh last year, a senior British diplomat slammed Azerbaijan’s use of force in Nagorno-Karabakh, GB News reported on Friday.
Neil Holland, the Head of the United Kingdom’s Delegation to the OSCE, said that Azerbaijan’s use of force is unacceptable and reaffirmed that Britain has urged a ceasefire in the long-running conflict. Holland also slammed Azerbaijan’s decision to commence a military operation in the region after a lull in violence.
Mark Movsesion, the Frederick A. Whitney Professor and Director of the Mattone Center for Law and Religion at St. John’s University Law School, told GB News that he was shocked by Lammy’s statement.
“The Foreign Secretary’s reference to Azerbaijan’s ‘liberation’ of Nagorno-Karabakh is shockingly callous and ignorant,” said Movsesion. “In fact, exactly a year ago, Baku ethnically cleansed the region of its 120,000 Christian Armenian inhabitants in violation of an order from the International Court of Justice.”
Movsesion, who is based in New York, said: “Additionally, Lammy seems to think Azerbaijan, like Ukraine, is trying to free itself from Russian domination. In fact, Azerbaijan and Russia are strategic partners, and Azerbaijan carried out the ethnic cleansing of Karabakh with Russian acquiescence.”
