After Baku withdrew from an approaching U.S.-hosted gathering due to reportedly “biased” remarks made by a US State Department official, Washington has reiterated its support for Azerbaijan and Armenian peace negotiations.
Washington continues” to help peace talks to resolve the issues between Azerbaijan and Armenia,” according to State Department official Matthew Miller during a press briefing on November 16.
” Whether they are ok or somewhere else, we may encourage the two parties to participate in those discussions, and that will 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.”
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 household took in the worn-out 60-year-old, he had been traveling for more than 24 hours.
Nothing will be standard for Azerbaijan following the events of September 19 until we see improvement on the peace 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 trips and denounced Baku’s activities, 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 cultural Armenian rule in Nagorno-Karabakh, which is recognized as a part of Azerbaijan worldwide.
Over the area, which had been a lot cultural Armenian enclave since the fall of the Soviet Union, Armenia and Azerbaijan have engaged in two wars in the last three years.
First, cultural 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 statement from November 16 that” like a punitive approach by the United States could result in the loss of the US’ counseling 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 leader of Pashinian and Azerbaijan, has participated in several rounds of negotiations mediated by the EU, despite Baku’s withdrawal from two sessions in September.
Aliyev even declined to participate in a square 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.
Baku claimed that France skipped those negotiations in Spain due to its alleged “biased status” against Armenia.
