BAKU, Azerbaijan, October 14. 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, President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev said addressing the meeting of the CIS Heads of State Council in Astana, Trend reports.
"On 6 October, on the sidelines of a new platform of the European political community in Prague, a four-sided meeting was held with the participation of the President of France, the President of the European Council, the Prime Minister of Armenia and the President of Azerbaijan. At that meeting, as a result of many hours of negotiations, the decision was reached to send a civilian mission of the European Union in the amount of 40 people to the territory of Armenia near the Armenia-Azerbaijan border. Subsequently, we learned that their number would be 50. They will stay there for at least two months and the purpose of this mission, as we saw it and therefore agreed to, is to help the parties to draw the border and agree on issues related to delimitation. There was an attempt to send this mission to the Azerbaijani side, which was resolutely rejected by us. Therefore, the mission will be located on the territory of Armenia, in the zone of CSTO’s responsibility. The first group of European representatives arrived in Armenia yesterday in order to determine the location of this mission.
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.
Further, the Embassy of Azerbaijan has been attacked twice in Paris. Moreover, after the first attack, the President of France, in a telephone conversation, promised to me that measures would be taken to prevent this from happening again. This turned out to be untrue, to put it mildly. The security guards that were installed in front of the Embassy of Azerbaijan after the first act of vandalism and an attempt to break into the Embassy building were removed. Most likely, this was agreed with the Armenian side. As soon as the security was removed, there was a second attempt to break through, there were insulting posters, crowds of raging radicals attacking the Embassy of Azerbaijan. This is categorically unacceptable and it is a violation of all diplomatic conventions," the head of state said.