POLITICS
Hikmat Hajiyev: There are powerful forces within Armenia that do not want the situation to change
Baku, September 14, AZERTAC
“There are powerful forces within Armenia that do not want this situation to change, or this story to be fully told,” said Assistant to the President of Azerbaijan, Head of Foreign Policy Affairs Department of the Presidential Administration Hikmat Hajiyev in his article headlined “To clinch peace in the Caucasus, pay attention to both sides” published by POLITICO Europe.
“The Azerbaijan government has repeatedly offered to supply the Armenians of Karabakh with food, medicine and more via roads that provide closer and faster passage than Lachin. The land routes Azerbaijan offers are acknowledged as viable and usable by the European Union, the U.S. and the International Committee of the Red Cross, and just this week, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken called for the “immediate and simultaneous opening of both corridors.” But what has been reported in the international media is something different,” the Assistant to Azerbaijani President noted.
“The idea that solely Armenia should supply ethnic Armenians living in the neighboring country of Azerbaijan through a single monoethnic route is — we are encouraged to believe — somehow acceptable to the international community and media. And we are told this is because this conflict is different to others, that Armenians cannot live side by side in the same country with Azerbaijanis because of our history. But both our past and present teach us this simply is not true.
Before the war of the 1990s, Azerbaijanis and ethnic Armenians lived together, side by side, in Karabakh in peace. Today, a 30,000-strong Jewish community lives in Azerbaijan. An evangelical Christian community is growing. Georgians, Russians, Ukrainians all make up today’s multiethnic and multireligious country. This could, and should, apply to the Armenians of Karabakh as well. There are, however, powerful forces within Armenia that do not want this situation to change, or this story to be fully told,” Hikmat Hajiyev emphasized.