After Baku withdrew from an approaching U.S. held conference due to reportedly “biased” remarks made by a US State Department official, Washington has reaffirmed its help for peace deals between Azerbaijan and Armenia.
State Department spokesman Matthew Miller reiterated that Washington continues” to help peace deals to resolve the issues between Azerbaijan and Armenia” during a press briefing on November 16.
Whether the two functions are present or not, we would 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 suggested conference in Washington on November 20, 2023, at the level of the foreign ministers of Armenia.”
The Foreign Ministry claimed that the decision was made in response to James O’Brien, the secretary U.S. secretary of state for Western and European affairs, who made what it called “one-sided and biased remarks” about Azerbaijan’s thunder offensive in September that led to Baku retaking control of the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region.
Watch: On September 19, after Azerbaijani causes attacked Nagorno- Karabakh, Tribal Iranian Rafik Sarkisian rode his favorite horse there to safety. 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 at a meeting of the U.S. House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee on November 15.
We have canceled several high-level appointments and denounced Baku’s actions, 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 cultural Armenian enclave since the fall of the Soviet Union, Armenia and Azerbaijan have fought two war in the last three years.
The area was originally ruled by ethnic 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 issue.
The majority of the region’s ethnic Armenian population—nearly 100,000—fled to Armenia after the most recent Azerbaijani offensive properly gave Baku control over the rest of it.
The Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry also stated in its November 16 statement that” the United States ‘ mediation role could be lost if it adopts such a unilateral approach.”
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 leader of Pashinian and Azerbaijan, has mediated many rounds of talks with the EU, despite Baku’s withdrawal from two meetings in September.
Aliyev even declined to participate in a round of talks with Pashinian that were to be controlled by Charles Michel of the European Council, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, and French President Emmanuel Macron that same quarter.
Yerevan claimed that France skipped those discussions in Spain due to its alleged “biased place” against Armenia.
