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.
Washington continues” to help peace talks to resolve the issues between Azerbaijan and Armenia,” according to State Department spokesman Matthew Miller during a media briefing on November 16.
Whether they are present or not, we do encourage 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 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 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 Azerbaijani causes attacked Nagorno- Karabakh, Cultural Iranian Rafik Sarkisian rode his favorite horse from that location to security 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 at 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 blast to bilateral and multilateral relations between the United States.”
The September offensive put an end to cultural Armenian rule in Nagorno-Karabakh, which is recognized as a part of Azerbaijan worldwide.
Over the area, which had been a lot ethnic Armenian colony since the fall of the Soviet Union, Armenia and Azerbaijan have fought two war 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. 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 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 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 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 a round of talks with Pashinian that were to be controlled by Charles Michel, the president of the European Council, Olaf Scholz, and French President Emmanuel Macron that same month.
Yerevan cited France’s alleged “biased place” against Armenia as the justification for skipping those negotiations in Spain.
