Azerbaijan slams French Senate’s vote on Nagorno-Karabakh

PTI, Nov 27, 2020, 11:07 AM IST

Baku: Azerbaijani officials have criticised a resolution adopted by the French Senate that urges the French government to recognise the separatist region of Nagorno-Karabakh as an independent republic.

The resolution, adopted on Wednesday, is symbolic and does not mean the French government will recognize a sovereign Nagorno-Karabakh. No UN member state recognizes the region, over which Armenia and Azerbaijan have been locked in a decades-long conflict, as independent.

Nevertheless, the move elicited outrage in Azerbaijan, which has previously criticized France for siding with Armenia in the dispute.

Several dozen people protested in front of the French embassy in the capital, Baku, on Thursday, chanting “France, be fair!”

The country’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement late Wednesday that the document can only be seen “as a provocation.”

Azerbaijani presidential aide Hikmet Hajiyev denounced the resolution Thursday as a “piece of paper adopted to serve narrow political ambitions,” and said that France’s “open pro-Armenian position… has become one of the main factors hindering the peaceful resolution of the conflict.”

Azerbaijan’s parliament urged the country’s government to reach out to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe in order to revoke France’s mandate as a co-chair of the Minsk Group set up by the Organization to mediate the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

Nagorno-Karabakh lies within Azerbaijan but has been under the control of ethnic Armenian forces backed by Armenia since 1994. That war left Nagorno-Karabakh itself and substantial surrounding territory in Armenian hands.

Heavy fighting that erupted in late September marked the biggest escalation of a long-simmering conflict between the two ex-Soviet republics.

The violence was halted by a Russian-brokered truce two weeks ago. The agreement stipulated that Armenia hand over control to Azerbaijan of some areas it holds outside Nagorno-Karabakh’s borders and was celebrated in Baku as a major victory.

Two out of three territories mentioned in the agreement have already been handed over to Azerbaijan.