The Azerbaijani president no longer wants the international community in the affairs of the Caucasus.
During his inauguration speech on Wednesday, autocrat Ilham Aliev, just re-elected for a fifth term with 93% of the vote, rejected any external arbitration in the territorial dispute between him and neighboring Armenia.
“I think that the process of normalization of relations between Azerbaijan and Armenia must be removed from the international agenda
,” he said before the deputies of Parliament meeting in Baku.
Since the conquest of the Armenian enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh last September, Azerbaijan and Armenia have started negotiations to reach a peace agreement which guarantees their territorial integrity on both sides.
In this context, the Russians, who are losing their influence in the region, and the Europeans, through the President of the Council Charles Michel, are engaged in a secret rivalry around the patronage of the final agreement.
“We do not need a mediator in this matter
,” President Aliev dismissed during his inauguration speech.
“Everyone who stands idly by wants to get involved in this story.
Mind your own business!”
, he said with an ironic smile, triggering warm applause from the assembly of elected officials.
“Shed blood and give martyrs”
In his speech on Wednesday, the Head of State affirmed that he no longer wanted to
“dedicate a lot of time to this subject (peace with Armenia, editor’s note), because it is not worth it”
.
“We have solved our problem
,” he said, listing the names of the cities conquered in the previous Nagorno-Karabakh wars.
“Today we are in Agdam, Fuzuli, Lachin, Jabrayil, Zangilanda, Gubadli, Kalbajar, Shusha, Hadrut, Khojaly, Agdara, Askaran, Khankendi!
This new era begins successfully.
I am sure that this will continue successfully
,” he assured, in a barely disguised threat towards Armenian territory – whose border he describes, throughout his speech, as
“conditional”
.
Since the blitzkrieg in Nagorno-Karabakh in September, which led to ethnic cleansing through the exodus of an entire population, the Azerbaijani head of state has increased his belligerent declarations.
Again on Wednesday, Ilham Aliev prided himself on having
“proved to the whole world”
that his country was
“a great nation”
.
“We decide our own destiny, we resolve the problems facing the country by ourselves, without anyone's help,”
he claimed, welcoming once again the
“restoration of territorial integrity”
of Azerbaijan, by the conquest of the Armenian enclave.
“More than 300 towns and villages were liberated, including the town of Choucha, our cultural capital, was liberated from the invaders.
We have restored historical justice by shedding blood and giving martyrs,”
the head of state further declared.
“A total war”
Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian, for his part, accused Azerbaijan on Thursday of wanting a
“total war”.
T
wo days earlier, deadly clashes on the border between these two former Soviet republics left four Armenian soldiers dead.
Both parties blamed each other for the shootings.
Yerevan fears the conquering desires of President Aliev, who has never hidden his objective of annexing the Zangezour corridor, a strip of land constituting the southern region of Armenia, Syunik.
“Our analyzes show that Azerbaijan wants to launch military actions in certain areas of the border with the prospect of a military escalation
,” declared Nikol Pashinian during a council of ministers, defining Baku’s policy in these terms: “
give me everything I want through negotiations, otherwise I’ll take everything through military means.”