BAKU, Azerbaijan, February 24. The issue with the EU's mediation in the settlement of Azerbaijani-Armenian ties is that France is not viewed as an impartial mediator; rather, it tends to prefer Armenia due to the enormous political influence of the Armenian diaspora on official Paris, American diplomat Richard Hoagland wrote in an article for the American Caspian Policy Center, Trend reports.
According to Richard Hoagland, who served as the United States' co-chair of the OSCE Minsk Group in 2017, the European Union's efforts in the Caspian region are not going smoothly. The stumbling block is the EU's claimed mediation role between Armenia and Azerbaijan.
"The two countries (Azerbaijan and Armenia) are seeking a framework agreement for real and lasting peace. The problem with EU mediation is that France is not perceived as a neutral mediator as it tends to favor Armenia over Azerbaijan due to the Armenian diaspora's strong political influence on official Paris," Hoagland stressed.
Meanwhile, relations between Azerbaijan and France cracked at the end of 2023 due to the French leadership's unconstructive stance on the possibility of achieving a just peace between Azerbaijan and Armenia and Paris' demonstration of its biased political preferences.
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev commented on France's unjustified actions in the UNSC, attempts to militarize Armenia, and anti-Azerbaijani sentiments in an interview with Azerbaijani media on January 10, 2024.
"French President Jacques Chirac once persuaded my father to agree to French co-chairmanship and promised him that France would be neutral... Externally, the balance was maintained until recently. It was broken by the French side even before the II Karabakh War, apparently due to a generational change in the fundamentals of France's foreign policy. We are witnessing this not only in France but also in most European countries, when people with great authority in their countries and on the international arena left the stage and came, in general, random people, populists, and demagogues, and we all see what it leads to," the President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev said.
The President of Azerbaijan and the Prime Minister of Armenia held talks mediated by the Federal Republic of Germany on February 17, 2024, in the framework of the Munich Security Conference.
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