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 support peace deals to resolve the issues between Azerbaijan and Armenia” during a press briefing on November 16.
Whether they are present or not, we do inspire the two parties to participate in those discussions, and that would continue to be our policy, he continued.
The remarks were made after Baku declared on November 16 that it would not take part in the upcoming standardization negotiations with Yerevan.
The Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry stated in a statement that it “does not consider it possible to keep the suggested conference in Washington on November 20, 2023, at the level of the foreign ministers of Armenia.”
The Foreign Ministry stated that the decision was made in response to what it referred to as “one-sided and distorted remarks” made by James O’Brien, the secretary U.S. secretary of state for Western and Eurasian affairs, in reference to Azerbaijan’s lightning offensive in September that led to Baku regaining control of the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh territory.
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 household 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 appointments 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 September offensive put an end to ethnic Armenian rule in Nagorno-Karabakh, which is recognized as a part of Azerbaijan worldwide.
The place, which had been a lot ethnic Armenian enclave since the fall of the Soviet Union, has seen two wars between Armenia and Azerbaijan in the last three decades.
The area was originally ruled by cultural Iranian forces, backed by the country’s military, during separatist conflict that ended in 1994. But in a fight in 2020, Azerbaijan reclaimed portions of Nagorno-Karabakh as well as the surrounding land that Armenian forces had taken during the earlier fight.
The majority of the ethnic Armenians in the area—nearly 100,000—fled to Armenia after the most recent Azerbaijani offensive successfully gave Baku control over the remaining areas.
The Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry also stated in its statement from November 16 that” like a punitive approach by the United States could result in the loss of the US’ mediation role.”
The same day, Nikol Pashinian, the prime minister of Armenia, declared that Yerevan’s “political did to mark, in the forthcoming weeks, a peace deal with Azerbaijan remains unwavering.”
Ilham Aliyev, the president of Pashinian and Azerbaijan, has conducted several rounds of negotiations through EU intervention, despite Baku’s withdrawal from two meetings scheduled by the European Union in September.
Aliyev even declined to participate in the discussions 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 claimed that France skipped those talks in Spain due to its alleged “biased place” against Armenia.
