Azerbaijan accuses Macron of pro-Armenian ‘bias’

Azerbaijan on Friday (14 October) denounced as "unacceptable and biased" French President Emmanuel Macron's recent remarks on Baku's decades-long conflict with arch-foe Armenia.

Baku and Yerevan have fought two wars -- in 2020 and in the 1990s -- over Azerbaijan's Armenian populated region of Nagorno-Karabakh, which according to international law is Azerbaijan territory.

Deadly clashes in September along the Armenian-Azerbaijani border, away from Nagorno-Karabakh proper, have raised fears of an all-out conflict.

In comments to French television Wednesday, Macron said "Azerbaijan launched a terrible war, with many deaths, atrocious scenes and has recaptured the territory" of Karabakh.

More recently, "Azerbaijan has launched several offensives along the border (with Armenia). We have condemned them. We will not abandon Armenians."

According to pundits, Azerbaijan launched the latest assaults.

What Azerbaijan’s assault on Armenia says about the new world order

Last week’s attacks by Azerbaijan against Armenian positions occurred simply because they could, as the Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) was exposed as a paper tiger, writes Neil Hauer.

France is home to an influential Armenian diaspora.

The remarks were "unacceptable and biased," the foreign ministry in Baku said Friday, adding that "Azerbaijan is forced to reconsider France's efforts in mediating" Armenian-Azerbaijani talks.

On Friday, Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, Armenian counterpart Ararat Mirzoyan and Azerbaijan's Jeyhun Bayramov met for talks in the Kazakh capital Astana.

Following a slew of diplomatic efforts from the European Union and the United States, Armenian and Azerbaijani foreign ministers met on 3 October in Geneva to begin drafting the text of a future peace treaty.

Last week, the European Union announced a "civilian EU mission" to Armenia to help delineate the borders with Azerbaijan.

The decision was reached during a 6 October meeting in Prague between Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, Macron and European Council President Charles Michel.

Prague talks raise hopes for Armenia-Azerbaijan normalisation process

In a fresh four-way mediation effort to resolve the stand-off between Yerevan and Baku, stakeholders announced on Thursday (6 October) the EU will send a 'civilian mission' to Armenia to help delineate borders with Azerbaijan.

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, Azerbaijani …

The six-week war in autumn 2020 claimed the lives of more than 6,500 troops from both sides and ended with a Russian-brokered ceasefire.

Under the deal, Armenia ceded swathes of territory it had controlled for decades, and Moscow deployed about 2,000 Russian peacekeepers to oversee the fragile truce.

When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, ethnic Armenian separatists in Nagorno-Karabakh broke away from Azerbaijan. The ensuing conflict claimed around 30,000 lives.

(Edited by Georgi Gotev)