BAKU, Azerbaijan, October 14. France has nothing to do with the relations between Azerbaijan and Armenia, President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev said addressing the meeting of the CIS Heads of State Council in Astana, Trend reports.
"Unfortunately, despite the fact that Azerbaijan agreed to the four-sided meeting, including the participation of the President of France although France has nothing to do with the relations between Azerbaijan and Armenia – as a co-chair of the Minsk Group, France did have a mandate for mediation, but since the Karabakh conflict has been resolved and there is no need for the services of the Minsk Group, especially since this was rather a disservice, as I said, and the Minsk Group had done nothing at all, not a single centimeter of our territory was vacated – Azerbaijan showed goodwill nonetheless and allowed the French President to participate in this meeting. As for the participation of the President of the European Council, as you know, several trilateral meetings have already been held in Brussels and, in principle, we have always supported the efforts of the European Union towards the normalization of Azerbaijan-Armenia relations. Despite the goodwill shown by Azerbaijan, just a week after the meeting in Prague, the President of France made insulting, unacceptable, false and provocative statements. They are available in the media and everyone can see them. In these statements, he accused Azerbaijan of engaging in a horrific war, thereby manipulating the facts, trying to mislead the French and world public. Azerbaijan waged war on its internationally recognized territory. Karabakh is recognized by the whole world as a part of Azerbaijan. We exercised our right to self-defense and restored our territorial integrity by force. It was then stated that France would never abandon Armenia. This, as they say, is a matter of bilateral relations. Biased statements were also made against the Russian Federation, namely, that “Russia played the Azerbaijani game”. It is up to the French public to decide on how politically correct it is for the President of a great country to use the street lexicon. For our part, we categorically condemn and reject such statements and, given such an attitude of the French government, see no further possibility for France to play a role in the normalization of Azerbaijan-Armenia relations.
In addition, the French foreign minister has also made false anti-Azerbaijan statements. During the Second Karabakh War, the French Senate and the lower house of their parliament adopted resolutions recognizing the so-called Nagorno-Karabakh although it wasn’t recognized even by Armenia. We are aware that another anti-Azerbaijan resolution is being prepared in the French Senate in mid-November. Therefore, unfortunately, the current French leadership, unlike the previous ones – I had the opportunity to communicate quite closely with President Chirac, President Sarkozy and President Hollande, and our relations were quite balanced, quite friendly, and we always perceived the activities of previous French presidents, despite, of course, a certain factor of the Armenian diaspora in France, as balanced. However, the current French leadership has effectively crossed out all this. Therefore, I wanted to inform colleagues about this situation," the head of state said.