Caucasus (bbabo.net), - Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev announced today, November 25, that his meeting with Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan in Brussels, scheduled for December 7, will not take place.
“Yesterday, Hikmet Hajiyev (Assistant to the President of Azerbaijan for Foreign Affairs. - Ed.) informed me that he was contacted from the office of (Chairman of the Council of the EU) Charles Michel and informed that Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan agreed to a meeting only on condition of participation in her French President Emmanuel Macron. This means that this meeting will not take place,” Aliyev said, speaking at the international conference “Along the Middle Corridor: Geopolitics, Security and Economics.”
The head of the republic explained his decision, recalling the recent events in the Azerbaijani-French relations.
“Less than a week after the meeting in Prague (October 6), President Macron criticized Azerbaijan in an interview and accused us of something we did not do. This was followed by the well-known resolution of the French Senate, which is absolutely unacceptable and offensive. Then there was another anti-Azerbaijani resolution of the French National Assembly, and then an attempt by France to attack us through the Francophonie summit. This is unacceptable, since the Francophonie is a humanitarian organization,” Aliyev said.
Given all this, he said, "it is clear that France cannot take part in the peace process."
“And this is not ours, but their fault, since neither the United States nor Russia has ever officially taken sides. This means that the meeting on December 7 will not take place. And we will consider other alternatives. Let's see who will act as an intermediary and on what platform,” the Azerbaijani leader said.
At the same time, he stressed that he considers Pashinyan's condition for Macron's participation in the Brussels meeting "as an attempt to disrupt the peace talks."
The last time the four-sided meeting Pashinyan-Michel-Makron-Aliyev was held on the sidelines of the European Political Community in the capital of the Czech Republic. In Brussels, Pashinyan and Aliyev met for the last time on August 31 this year through the mediation of Michel.
As bbabo.net reported, the Azerbaijani leader sharply criticized the statements of his French counterpart regarding the Karabakh conflict and the Armenian-Azerbaijani normalization, speaking on October 14 at the CIS summit in Astana.
bbabo.Net