Following Baku’s withdrawal from an approaching U.S.-hosted meet due to reportedly “biased” remarks made by a member of the US State Department, Washington has reaffirmed its help for peace negotiations between Azerbaijan and Armenia.
State Department official Matthew Miller reiterated that Washington continues” to help peace talks to resolve the issues between Azerbaijan and Armenia” during a press briefing on November 16.
Whether the two functions are present or not, we do encourage them to participate in those discussions, and that would remain our policy, he continued.
The remarks were made after Baku declared on November 16 that it would not take part in the prepared standardization negotiations with Yerevan this month.
The Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry stated in a statement that it “does not consider it possible to keep the proposed meeting in Washington on November 20, 2023, at the level of the foreign ministries of Armenia.”
James O’Brien, the secretary U.S. secretary of state for German and European affairs, made what the Foreign Ministry referred to as “one-sided and slanted remarks” in response to Baku regaining control of the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region in September as a result of Azerbaijan’s lightning offensive.
Watch: On September 19, after being attacked by Azerbaijani forces, Cultural Iranian Rafik Sarkisian rode his favorite horse from Nagorno- Karabakh to health in Armenia. Before a native Iranian family took in the worn-out 60-year-old, he had been traveling for more than 24 hours.
Nothing will be typical with Azerbaijan after the activities of September 19 until we see improvement on the harmony track, O’Brian declared during a meeting of the U.S. House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee on November 15.
We’ve canceled a number of high-level sessions and denounced Baku’s behavior, O’Brian continued.
The remarks, according to the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry, “were a punch to bilateral and multilateral relations between the United States.”
The cultural Armenian rule in Nagorno-Karabakh, which is recognized as a part of Azerbaijan worldwide, came to an end with the September offensive.
Over the area, which had been a lot ethnic Armenian colony since the fall of the Soviet Union, Armenia and Azerbaijan have engaged in two wars in the last three years.
First, ethnic Armenian forces ruled the area under the support of the local military during secessionist fighting that ended in 1994. However, in a fight in 2020, Azerbaijan reclaimed portions of Nagorno-Karabakh as well as the surrounding land that Armenian forces had earlier claimed.
The majority of the ethnic Armenians in the area—nearly 100,000—fled to Armenia after the most recent Azerbaijani offensive properly gave Baku control over the remaining areas.
The Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry also stated in its November 16 speech that” for a punitive view by the United States could result in the loss of the U States ‘ counseling part.”
The same day, Yerevan’s “political did to hint, in the coming weeks, a peace deal with Azerbaijan remains unwavering,” according to Nikol Pashinian, the prime minister of Armenia.
Ilham Aliyev, the president of Pashinian and Azerbaijan, has mediated many rounds of talks with the EU, despite Baku’s withdrawal from two sessions in September.
Aliyev even declined to participate in the negotiations with Pashinian that were to be controlled by Charles Michel of the European Council, Olaf Scholz of Germany, and Emmanuel Macron of France that same quarter.
Yerevan cited France’s alleged “biased place” against Armenia as the justification for skipping those negotiations in Spain.
