Baku, February 12, AZERTAC

The US-based Medium online media platform has published an article by Azerbaijan’s Consul General in Los Angeles Nasimi Aghayev who responded to a recent biased and flawed article by pro-Armenian U.S. Congressmembers Adam Schiff and Jackie Speier.

In his article titled "Members of Congress should promote Azerbaijan-Armenia peace, not conflict," Consul General Aghayev gives detailed information about Armenia's policy of aggression, occupation and ethnic cleansing against Azerbaijan, as well as the Khojaly Genocide of 1992 committed against Azerbaijani civilians by Armenian troops.

Highlighting Armenia's provocations and warmongering in recent years, the Consul General writes that Armenia launched a surprise attack on Azerbaijan on September 27 last year, noting that as a result of the ensuing 44-day war, Azerbaijan liberated its lands from the illegal, U.N. and U.S.-condemned occupation and restored its sovereign borders.

The Consul General notes “during the war, losing on the battlefield, Armenia resorted to vicious attacks against Azerbaijani civilians” murdering 100 civilians, including 12 children and wounding over 400. He also stresses that Armenia involved terrorists from the Middle East and Islamophobic fascists from Europe in its military operations against Azerbaijan.

Against this background, Consul General Aghayev asks “where was the outcry by these esteemed Congressmembers, when the invasion and ethnic cleansing of Azerbaijan’s territories began, or when the Khojaly Massacre was committed? Where have their voices been throughout the past 30 years of violent, illegal occupation, unilaterally perpetrated by Armenia? Where was their condemnation when documentation revealed that Armenia was conducting the erasure of Azerbaijani cultural heritage, desecrating and destroying 63 of the 67 historic Azerbaijani mosques in Karabakh, many turned into cow and pig sheds?”

He further asks “why did we not hear a single word of condemnation from them when Armenian missile attacks were killing innocent Azerbaijani civilians last fall? What can they say to the now over 1 million forcibly displaced Azerbaijanis, who can finally return to their ancestral lands that were violently stolen from them so many years ago? What about the outrageous destruction of almost every single house of Azerbaijanis, with their villages and towns razed to the ground, during three decades of brutal occupation, or the fact that Armenia has planted at least 100,000 landmines in the occupied districts, with a total contaminated area eight times larger than Paris, and now refuses to share the mine maps with Azerbaijan?”

Noting that Azerbaijan and the U.S. share over 30 years of deep and strategic partnership in many areas, the diplomat notes “the Armenian lobby, the radical maximalist nationalism of which rejected the compromise-based resolution of the conflict and pushed Armenia to war, should not be permitted to have any say in U.S. foreign policy.”

Aghayev highlights the work currently underway to restore transport links between Azerbaijan and Armenia, which is important for lasting peace. “Agreeing to exist within its own borders and to respect Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity, Armenia will finally have a chance to shake off its international pariah status and become a fully-fledged part of the region,” the Consul General says. “There is only one alternative to the normalization of Azerbaijan-Armenia relations and Azerbaijani-Armenian reconciliation and peaceful coexistence: The alternative is another bloody war,” Aghayev points out, concluding that “in this vein, Congresspersons Speier and Schiff should help strengthen the achieved peace, and not perpetuate the conflict.”