(MENAFN- Trend News Agency) BAKU, Azerbaijan, August 15. The National
Interest has published an article by Assistant to the President of
the Republic of Azerbaijan, Head of Foreign Policy Affairs
Department of the Presidential Administration Hikmat Hajiyev
headlined“Does Armenia Want to Derail Peace in the South
Caucasus?”. trend presents the article.
“For more than thirty years Armenia occupied some 20 percent of
the internationally recognized sovereign territory of Azerbaijan.
Close to a million Azerbaijanis who were living there were forced
to flee their homes, becoming internally displaced persons within
their own country.
The land won back after a 44-day war in 2020 was one wrought
with the unprecedented destruction of the public, private,
cultural, and religious heritage of Azerbaijan. Aghdam alone-once
one of the largest cities in the region-was obliterated to such an
extent it is now known as the“Hiroshima of the Caucasus.” It was
as if the occupiers had sought to remove any trace of Azerbaijan
whatsoever.
Even though international law, every country in the world, and
four separate UN Security Council resolutions recognize
Karabakh-the lands in question-as Azerbaijan's sovereign territory,
for three decades Armenian politicians fantasized over the creation
of either an independent ethnic Armenian territory or unification
with Armenia by annexing those seized lands.
When the current prime minister of Armenia, Nikol Pashinyan,
came to power in 2018, Azerbaijan expected he might pursue a
different path for a peaceful settlement of the conflict. But his
statement only a year later that“[Karabakh] is Armenia, and that's
it” ended hopes for the negotiation process. After the 2020
conflict, that statement met with hard reality, and the obligation
to admit earlier this year that Karabakh is part of Azerbaijan.
If only peace was so simple. But when it comes to the Armenian
leadership talking about peace while playing for time through
campaigns of obfuscation is all too familiar. So when this week
Armenia, together with the subordinated leadership of the
separatist regime in Karabakh, launched the latest international
campaign to scupper peace negotiations, it was unsurprising. The
raison d'être of this separatist entity is contingent upon
prolonging fantasies while avoiding the hard, geopolitical
facts.
But the reality on the ground has changed, and Azerbaijan
invites representatives of the Armenian residents of its Karabakh
region for open and genuine dialogue about reintegration. On
multiple occasions Azerbaijan has stated that their rights,
security, but also obligations as an ethnic minority in Karabakh
will be provided under the Constitution of Azerbaijan. This
includes their religious, linguistic, and municipal rights, which
are respected.
What is critical now is that any reintegration process must
include the demobilization and disarmament of all illegal military
groups and the complete withdrawal of elements of the armed forces
of Armenia that remain. To halt the flow of arms to such
groups-which has continued even as peace talks have proceeded-the
Lachin Road which connects Armenia to Khankendi was recently,
briefly, closed. Now it is reopened.
Azerbaijan has also offered to supply the region with food and
medicine itself, through another additional, shorter road with a
much greater daily capacity of over 17,000 vehicles. Both the
European Union and the International Committee of the Red Cross
have acknowledged this route can be used.
Yet this four-lane rebuilt Aghdam-Khankendi Road has,
incomprehensively, been repeatedly refused by the Karabakh
separatists, the road was even barricaded with concrete on the
order of their leaders. A proposal by Baku to have supplies
convoyed by the Red Cross-not Azerbaijan-using the Aghdam-Khankendi
Road was rejected. Even proposals just to have a dialogue about it
were rejected. The same leadership has, theatrically, even moved
trucks to the Azerbaijani border on the Lachin Road checkpoint. Yet
they say Armenians in Karabakh are facing ethnic cleansing at the
hand of Azerbaijan.
To bolster this false claim their leadership has hired the
former, controversial prosecutor of the International Criminal
Court, Luis Moreno Ocampo, to write a reckless report that alleges
Karabakh is under“blockade,” its residents are starving, and
claiming“genocide is being committed.”
In Azerbaijan, we are used to hearing such disinformation, but
for the international community and particularly the media it is
important to see that the use of such emotive, shocking terms is
intended to obscure what is really happening from their view.
Claiming they are under threat while engineering a crisis to
galvanize the international community's support is intended to
convince the world that Azerbaijanis and Armenians cannot live
together, as we once did.
The paradoxical claim Azerbaijan is starving a population that
is refusing its food was captured by the so-called leader of
separatists, Arayik Harutyunian, who stated“It (Azerbaijan) is
using one hand to strangle us and the other hand to feed us.” It
should instead be put in the correct legal framing: an
administration of occupation is blocking the Azerbaijani
government's provision of food and medicine to an Azerbaijani
region. Tellingly, nowhere in the Ocampo report is this
mentioned.
Meanwhile, the Armenian residents of Karabakh continue to
suffer. Having been reduced to living off handouts from Armenia
(itself one of the poorest post-Soviet countries). Economically,
the region has been left behind the rest of Azerbaijan, whose GDP
is today over 100 times its size at independence from the Soviet
Union.
Instead of engaging in campaigns and diplomatic games, Armenia
should commit itself to peace negotiations and the normalization of
relations between our two countries. Instead, this week's cynical
and ultimately counter-productive attempt to make an appeal to the
UN Security Council is another example that runs counter to such a
commitment in every way.
Territorial integrity and sovereignty of every and each country
is sacrosanct. A selective approach to separatism cannot be
acceptable. Verbal statements from the Armenian leadership on
supporting Azerbaijan's territorial integrity should be inked
within a peace treaty. Armenia should also finally cease all its
territorial claims against Azerbaijan and pull out all elements of
its armed forces from Azerbaijan's territory. There is no other way
forward. Azerbaijan has taken the first steps to map out the road
to peace. The ball is now in Armenia's court, with its political
leadership.”