Leading media outlets write about Joe Biden’s victory
20:40, 7 November, 2020
YEREVAN, NOVEMBER 7, ARMENPRESS. A number of leading media outlets inform that Democratic Joe Biden has been elected U.S. President.
ARMENPRESS reports CNN and BBC inform about Biden’s victory.
According to CNN, Joe Biden has already received 273 votes. 270 votes are necessary for being elected.
BBC wrote that Joe Biden will become U.S. President, defeating Donald Trump.
13:27, 1 November, 2020
YEREVAN, NOVEMBER 1, ARMENPRESS. Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has said that there is complete and comprehensive evidence that thousands of mercenaries have been recruited in Syria, transported by Turkey to Azerbaijan for fighting against Artsakh.
The PM shared on Facebook the video from the questioning of a mercenary-terrorist by the Investigative Committee of Armenia.
“This is an international criminal network, and its discovery cannot remain without consequence. There will be new evidence in the nearest future”, the PM said.
Syrian militant detained in Armenia says Suleyman-Shah chief Abu Hamsha brought them via Turkey
October 31, 2020
International Association of Genocide Scholars
The International Association of Genocide Scholars on Saturday issued a statement warning of an imminent genocide in Artsakh committed by Azerbaijan and Turkey. Below is the text of the announcement.
Since September 27, 2020, Azerbaijan, backed by Turkey, initiated a large-scale, unprovoked war against the Republic of Artsakh and the Republic of Armenia. Over the last days Azerbaijani forces have intentionally been attacking civilians and civilian infrastructures, and they have heavily shelled Stepanakert, Shushi, Mardakert, Hadrut, and other settlements with cluster munitions and other weapons prohibited by international humanitarian laws.
The Shushi Holy Savior (Ghazanchetsots) Cathedral, was severely damaged after two deliberate air raids conducted by the Azerbaijani military on October 8 and 9. This is not only a violation of the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict and its two (1954 and 1999) Protocols, but also a part of policy of the cultural genocide that the Azerbaijani government has been implementing over the past 30 years by systematically destroying the Armenian historical heritage, including thousands of ancient Khachkars (carved cross stones) in the city of Djulfa (Nakhichevan). It is well established that cultural genocide is clear evidence of the existence of a special intent to commit genocide.
Furthermore, it is documented that Turkish armed forces and air forces directly participate in hostilities. Moreover, there are many impartial international media reports showing that during the current large-scale Azeri aggression against Artsakh, a substantial number of mercenaries identifying as jihadists from Syria and Libya, and likely also from Afghanistan and Pakistan, are hired and sent by Turkey to Azerbaijan to fight against Armenians . This also constitutes a violation of international law.
Direct Turkish involvement in the decades-long conflict is thus no longer a threat that Armenians in Artsakh, Armenia, and Turkey have had to fear, but a fact that threatens to annihilate Armenians in Artsakh and beyond. A recent statement issued by the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, read that they, Turkey, were going “to continue to fulfill the mission of their grandfathers, which was carried out a century ago in the Caucasus”. This constitutes a direct threat of continuing the Armenian genocide that began in 1915.
The statement does not stand alone. Turkey officially and continuously denies the Armenian genocide, but various officials, including the president, have repeatedly hinted that Turkey is ready to once more “give a lesson” to Armenians, and that the “deportation” of Armenians in 1915 was the most appropriate decision at the time . “Armenian” is a commonly-used curse word in Turkey, and “leftovers of the sword” is another derogatory term used in Turkish to refer to the survivors of the genocide, which Erdogan publicly used during a briefing in May 2020. These and many other examples all amount to tacit recognition and approval of the genocide; it is, in other words, hate speech that threatens a new genocide. The attacks against Armenian churches and other properties all around the world by the Turkish nationalists are on the rise. Lately, Armenians and other Christians in Istanbul were targeted and blamed for supposedly spreading coronavirus, and Armenians have also been harassed by pro-Azeri Turks since the beginning of the latest outbreak of war. The most high-profiled victim has been the Turkish-Armenian politician Garo Paylan from the pro-Kurdish HDP-party. And Erdogan’s government does not spare its Turkish or Kurdish intellectuals and ordinary citizens, prosecuting them for even the slightest imagined transgression.
The position of the Azerbaijani leadership and society is even more aggressive. For years, anti-Armenian discourse and propaganda have been part of official state policy. Every day, indoctrination is carried out from schools to state media that demonizes Armenians, presenting them as an absolute evil that should be deprived of the right to live in Artsakh and Armenia, including the capital Yerevan. In one of his many public speeches, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev himself spoke about a “hypocritical, global Armenian conspiracy with Western politicians, who are embroiled in corruption and bribery,” reminiscent of Adolf Hitler’s “global Jewish conspiracy” thesis, reiterated many times in Nazi speeches as a pretext and justification for the Holocaust.
It is therefore not merely rhetorical when on October 3, in the early phase of the current conflict, Armenia’s Prime Minister, Nikol Pashinyan, in his address to the nation stated the following: “The objective of the Azerbaijani-Turkish bandits is not about claiming territory. Their objective is the Armenian people. Their objective is to continue their genocidal policy.” In fact, history, from the Armenian genocide to the last three decades of conflict, as well as current political statements, economic policies, sentiments of the societies and military actions by the Azerbaijani and Turkish leadership should warn us that genocide of the Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh, and perhaps even Armenia, is a very real possibility. All of this proves that Armenians can face slaughter if any Armenian territory is occupied, consequently recognizing of the independence of the Republic of Artsakh is the way to save Armenians of Artsakh from extermination now or in the near future.
And already a case can be made that there is conspiracy to commit genocide, direct and public incitement to commit genocide, and attempt to commit genocide, all of which are acts that, according to article 3 of 1948 UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, all states of the world are obliged to prevent and punish.
We, as members of the academic community, demand that the international community takes direct and serious action so that the Azerbaijani aggression immediately ceases, and that anti-Armenian state propaganda and hatred in Azerbaijan and Turkey ends. We appeal to the international community to raise their voices against xenophobia, aggression, and war, and for the prevention of new genocide.
– Kirk C Allison, MS, Health Humanities, Saint Scholastica College, USA
– Ruth Amir, Yezreel Valley College, Israel
– Eugene N. Anderson, Professor Emeritus, Anthropology, University of California, Riverside, USA
– Juan Pablo Artinian, Torcuato Di Tella University, Argentina
– Maral N. Attallah, Distinguished Lecturer, Dept. of Critical Race, Gender & Sexuality Studies, Humboldt State University, USA
– Yair Auron, Open University of Israel (Emeritus), Israel
– Vahagn Avedian, independent researcher, genocide, peace and conflict studies, Sweden
– Aris Babikian, former Citizenship Judge, Canada
– Peter Balakian, Rebar Professor of the Humanities, Colgate University, USA
– Jean-Philippe Belleau, Associate Professor of Anthropology, University of Massachusetts Boston, USA
– Eldad Ben Aharon, Leiden University Institute for Area Studies, Netherlands
– Caroline Bennett, Member of the IAGS Advisory Board, Lecturer in Cultural Anthropology, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand
– Sara Birjandian, Vancouver, BC, Canada
– Martin Bitschnau, “Society for the Documentation of Genocides [ger] (Völkermord.at – Gesellschaft für die Dokumentation von Völkermorden)”, Austria
– Matthias Bjørnlund, Danish Institute for Study Abroad, Denmark
– Nélida Elena Boulgourdjian, University of Buenos Aires, Argentina
– James Burnham Sedgwick, Associate Professor, Department of History and Classics, Acadia University, Nova Scotia, Canada
– Sara E. Brown, Member of the IAGS Advisory Board, Executive Director of the Center for Holocaust, Human Rights & Genocide Education, New Jersey, USA
– Israel W. Charny, Past President, International Association Genocide Scholars (IAGS), Executive Director, Institute on the Holocaust & Genocide, Jerusalem.
– Kasturi Chatterjee, Assistant Professor, FLAME University, India
– John Cox, UNC Charlotte, Associate Professor, Department of Global Studies, Director, Center for Holocaust, Genocide & Human Rights Studies, USA
– Don Cummings, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Professional Educator, Worcester (MA) Public Schools, USA
– Asya Darbinyan, Visiting Research Scholar, Clark University, USA
– Hilary Earl, Department of History, Nipissing University, Canada
– Joanne D. Eisen, Independence Institute, USA
– Kate W. English, Executive Director, EIHR: The Educators’ Institute for Human Rights, Washington, DC, USA
– Jenna Fagan, Lehigh University, USA
– Amy Fagin, Member IAGS Executive Board; Director: Beyond Genocide Centre for Prevention, New Salem, Massachusetts, USA
– Hervé Georgelin, Lecturer of History, University of Athens, Department of Turkish Studies and Modern Asian Studies, Greece
– Grace V. Giammona, ALM candidate in International Relations at Harvard University, USA
– Todd Gitlin, Columbia University, USA
– Patrick Hein, Lecturer of Politics, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, Japan
– Tessa Hofmann, author and independent scholar of genocide studies, Berlin, Germany
– Raymond Kévorkian, president of the Armenian Genocide Museum-Institut Foundation
– Suzanne Khardalian Holmquist, film director, Stockholm, Sweden
– Anahit Khosroeva, Institute of History, NAS, Armenia
– Péter Pál Kránitz, independent scholar, Hungary
– Theodosios Kyriakidis, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece
– Samantha Lakin, Advanced Doctoral Candidate, Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Clark University; Fulbright Scholar (Rwanda 2017-2018; Switzerland 2011-2012), USA
– Bård Larsen, Civita, Oslo, Norway
– John Liffiton, Director, Genocide Conference, Scottsdale Community College
– Robert Jay Lifton, Columbia University, USA
– Dominika Maria Macios, Polish Institute of World Art Studies, Poland
– Charikleia Magdalini Kefalidou, University of Caen, France
– Joseph Mai, Clemson University, USA
– Suren Manukyan, Member of the IAGS Advisory Board, Head, UNESCO Chair on Education and Prevention of Genocide and Other Atrocity Crimes at Yerevan State University; Armenian Genocide Museum & Institute, Armenia
– Armen T. Marsoobian, Philosophy Professor, First Vice President of the International Association of Genocide Scholars, Southern Connecticut State University, New Haven, CT, USA
– Harutyun Marutyan, Director, Armenian genocide Museum & Institute, Armenia
– Alyssa Mathias, PhD Candidate, Department of Ethnomusicology, University of California, Los Angeles, USA
– Ibrahim Malazada, Visiting Research fellow at CRPSR, Coventry University, UK, Lecturer at Soran University, Kurdistan Region
– Arda Melkonian, Fuller Theological Seminary, USA
– Doris Melkonian, Fuller Theological Seminary, USA
– Éva Merenics, Independent Researcher, Hungary
– Michaela Moura-Koçoglu, Assistant Teaching Professor, Center for Women and Gender Studies, Florida International University, Miami, USA
– Stacey M. Mitchell, Georgia State University’s Perimeter College, USA
– Alexandra Morehead, Brown University, USA
– Luisa Morettin, NCI University London, UK
– Shepherd Mpofu, University of Limpopo, South Africa
– Adam Muller, Member of the IAGS Advisory Board, Professor and Director, Peace and Conflict Studies, University of Manitoba, Canada
– Jeanine Ntihirageza, Professor and Director of the Center for Genocide and Human Rights Research in Africa and the Diaspora, Northeastern Illinois University , Chicago, USA
– Darren O’Brien, University of Queensland, Australia
– Regina Paulose, International Criminal Law Attorney, USA
– Rubina Peroomian, UCLA, Genocide Studies, USA
– Jack Nusan Porter, Past Vice-President, International Association Genocide Scholars (IAGS), The Davis Center, Harvard University, USA
– Nancy L. Rosenblum, Department of Government, Harvard University, USA
– Kaziwa Salih, Queens’ University, Canada
– Jakob Seerup, Bornholms Museum, Denmark
– Marc I. Sherman, Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide, Jerusalem, Israel
– Greg Stanton, Founding President, Genocide Watch, USA
– Pamela Steiner, Harvard School of Public Health, USA
– Charles B. Strozier, The City University of New York Professor
– Paul Slovic, University of Oregon, USA
– Henry C. Theriault, President, International Association of Genocide Scholars, USA
– Steven A Usitalo, Professor of History, Chair of the Department of History and Social Sciences, Northern State University, USA
– Elisa von Joeden-Forgey, Past Vice-President, International Association Genocide Scholars (IAGS), Endowed Chair, Department of Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Keene State College, USA
– Jenna Walmer, M.A. Candidate in Holocaust and Genocide Studies at West Chester University of Pennsylvania, USA
– Kerry Whigham, Assistant Professor of Genocide and Mass Atrocity Prevention, Binghamton University; Director of Research and Online Education, Auschwitz Institute for the Prevention of Genocide and Mass Atrocities, USA
– Stephanie Wolfe, Weber State University, USA
– Hrag Yacoubian, University of British Columbia, Canada
– Eve Zucker, Research Affiliate, Council of Southeast Asian Studies, Yale University, USA
14:45,
YEREVAN, OCTOBER 27, ARMENPRESS. The man shown in a video posted online where he was seen speaking fluent Armenian and presented to be an Azerbaijani is actually a citizen of Armenia and hasn’t had any participation in the military actions, according to the Committee of Investigations of Armenia.
“Perhaps this is the result of a false presentation. There are numerous factual data that substantiate that this person is a citizen of Armenia and doesn’t have a POW status. This is disinformation,” Vardanyan said.
Editing and Translating by Stepan Kocharyan
21:31,
YEREVAN, OCTOBER 20, ARMENPRESS. Member of the National Assembly of France Valérie Boyer asked all the parties of the Senate to join her proposal of recognizing the independence of the Republic of Artsakh and condemning the actions of Azerbaijan and Turkey, ARMENPRESS reports Valérie Boyer wrote on her Facebook page.
‘’I have asked all the groups of the Senate to join my proposal of recognizing the independence of the Republic of Artsakh and condemning the actions of Azerbaijan and Turkey. Lives are endangered, genocide is taking place in front of us. It’s time to act’’, she wrote.
Yesterday Boyer said she will submit to the French Senate a proposal to recognize Nagorno-Karabakh and condemn the actions of Turkey and Azerbaijan.
Valérie Boyer added that resisting the attacks of Azerbaijan on Nagorno-Karabakh also means to go against the spread of Turkish Islam in Europe. ‘’This week I will submit to the Senate a proposal to recognize Nagorno-Karabakh and condemn the actions of Turkey and Azerbaijan,” she wrote.
Editing and translating by Tigran Sirekanyan
On September 27, Azerbaijan began a coordinated full-scale aerial and missile attack on Artsakh, Armenia. Turkey has played an especially active role by not only supporting, but also driving much of Azerbaijan’s aggression. It has provided its proxy with foreign mercenaries and the full extent of its military arsenal, including its F-16s . In fact, shortly after the assault on Artsakh began, Turkish President Recep Erdogan announced his full support for Azerbaijan and called for the overthrow of the Armenian government. These tactics are not new: Erdogan has employed them countless times, from its intervention in Libya to its dispute with Greece in the Mediterranean.
Unfortunately, some actors in the international community have dismissed Azerbaijan as the aggressor, calling both sides to “prepare populations for peace.” But if Armenia was never in search for war in first place, what more do they have to prepare for?
In contrast, Azerbaijan has been preparing its population for war over the past two decades — institutionalizing anti-Armenian sentiment, stockpiling military assets purchased from Turkey and Israel, and steadily sidelining efforts for a negotiated solution to the conflict. In fact, Azerbaijan recently disavowed the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) Minsk Group peace process when President Ilham Aliyev called the Nagorno Karabakh (Artsakh) mediation efforts “pointless” and threatening to resolve the issue militarily. What’s happening now shouldn’t come as a surprise to the international community — Azerbaijan telegraphed it all along.
Azerbaijan and Turkey have been working strategically to influence international public opinion, especially the United States, Israel and Europe. Azerbaijan’s nefarious foreign dealings were recently exposed by an Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) investigation into the “Azerbaijani laundromat,” an extensive money laundering operation that saw Azerbaijan funnel over $2.9 billion dollars between 2012 and 2014 alone into foreign shell corporations to buy favor among international institutions, politicians, lobbyists and journalists. UNESCO and the European Parliament were extensively targeted, and recent reports have surfaced from Israel of the transfer of a significant amount of funds from the state-owned Israeli Aerospace Industries to a laundromat-linked account after a $5 billion contract was signed between the two.
Azerbaijan’s public relations efforts have sought to obscure the international community’s awareness of the virulent state-sponsored anti-Armenian racism throughout Azerbaijani society that has resulted in the incitement of hate crimes, such as the destruction of cultural monuments and the granting of impunity to the perpetrators of hate crimes. Moreover, Azerbaijan and Turkey have repeatedly dismissed and denied the Armenian genocide, not only refusing to take accountability for the actions of their predecessors in perpetrating this crime against humanity, but going to the lengths of openly espousing the very ideologies that informed the genocide 105 years ago.
These actions have had international reverberations. For example, following Azerbaijan’s aggression against the Republic of Armenia in July, tens of thousands of Azerbaijani demonstrators chanted “death to Armenians” in the streets of Baku. That has spread to diaspora even in the United States, where in recent weeks, most notably in San Francisco, a series of attacks were waged against an Armenian church and elementary school.
Ironically, Azerbaijan has often touted itself as a leader in human rights and religious liberty. But according to measures of religious liberty from the Varieties of Democracy, Azerbaijan ranks within the 10th percentile of countries across the world as of 2018 — far below the median. In contrast, Armenia ranks at roughly the unweighted mean across all countries in the data.
While religious liberty might seem like a luxury to some students of international relations, it is an important determinant of human flourishing. Using a sample of over 150 countries surveyed between 2006 and 2018, new research from one of the authors shows that religious liberty has a causal effect on human flourishing, particularly among religious minorities. Importantly, these results are present even after controlling for measures of economic freedom (e.g., property rights) from the Heritage Foundation’s Index of Economic Freedom and measures of economic activity (e.g., GDP).
The research suggests that religious liberty is a prerequisite for democratic governance, aiding the process for civic engagement and women empowerment and reducing the potential for public and political corruption. Not surprisingly, limiting the freedom to choose and arrive at even the most basic judgments about their identity stifles creativity and increases the potential for corruption by overly zealous and powerful bureaucrats. In this sense, until Azerbaijan recognizes the legitimate right to self-determination of the Armenian people free of threat of persecution for their religion, culture and ethnic identity, peace is going to be impossible.
Throughout the years, the chief failure of the OSCE Minsk Group – the entity mandated with finding a settlement to this conflict – and its three co-chairs – the United States, Russia and France – has been the refusal to directly attribute blame to Azerbaijan for its constant aggression and ceasefire. Despite efforts by the U.S to curtail Azerbaijan’s aggression during the 1991-94 war, and in recent years its advocacy for the implementation of the Royce-Engel peace protocols, successive administrations have continued to appease Azerbaijan, including the recent earmarking of $100 million in military assistance to the Caspian dictatorship earlier this year.
While Azerbaijan has positioned itself as a key strategic partner to the U.S. in the region, often cynically deploying its relationship with Israel as an example of its good-faith partnership, its close ties to an increasingly dictatorial and expansionist Turkey, as well as its oft-overlooked relationship with Iran and Russia, demonstrates that Azerbaijan is only out to serve its own interests, even if that means transferring millions of dollars into Russian and Iranian state-linked companies, or selling Iran a 10 percent stake in one of its major oil pipelines despite international sanctions regimes.
While Azerbaijan has attempted to shield itself from international scrutiny by riding on the presence of tense domestic politics in the United States and a global pandemic, we cannot ignore it any longer. The international community must recognize that failure to stand up for religious minorities anywhere is a threat to them everywhere. Inaction creates precedent and emboldens dictators.
Christos A. Makridis is an assistant research professor at Arizona State University, a non-resident fellow at Baylor University, and a senior adviser at Gallup. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram @camakridis. Alex Galitsky is communications eirector of the Armenian National Committee of America – Western Region, the largest Armenian grassroots advocacy organization in the United States. Follow him on Twitter @algalitsky.
https://thehill.com/opinion/international/520437-azerbaijans-assault-against-armenia-threatens-democracy-everywhere?fbclid=IwAR117ufZn_gDEyLUEXAgj4O0D_cfDHWShqtE_gKZQTrbYojZ8I-Dj9RGYDY#.X4IYzw4ZWAw.facebook
Armenian prime minister says his country faces ‘decisive moment’ as fighting between Armenian and Azeri forces intensifies in Nagorno-Karabakh.
Armenian and Azerbaijani forces have been engaged in intense fighting over the breakaway Nagorno-Karabakh region, scuttling diplomatic efforts to reach a ceasefire to end the latest conflict that has killed hundreds of people.
Shushan Stepanyan, spokeswoman for the Armenian defence ministry, said on Saturday that Azerbaijan had launched a new large-scale offensive, which was repelled by Armenia-backed forces who then launched a counter-push.
“Heavy fighting is ongoing on other flanks,” she wrote on Facebook.
Meanwhile, Azerbaijan’s defence ministry said its troops had destroyed a large amount of military equipment belonging to the Armenian military.
“During the present day, the troops of the Azerbaijani army, successfully advancing in the intended directions, took possession of new strongholds and carried out a clean-up of the territory from the enemy,” the ministry said early on Saturday.
Nagorno-Karabakh is controlled by ethnic Armenians backed by Armenia and has been the subject of several United Nations resolutions calling for an end to the occupation of Azeri lands.
The leader of the breakaway province, Arayik Harutyunyan, said he was heading to the front and that the “final battle” for the region had begun, while Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said his nation was facing a historic threat.
“We are facing possibly the most decisive moment in our millennia-old history,” Pashinyan said in an address to the nation on Saturday. “We all must dedicate ourselves to a singular goal: Victory.”
World powers have been calling for a ceasefire since Sunday when fighting over the region, which is officially part of Azerbaijan, broke out.
On Friday, Armenia’s foreign ministry said it was prepared to work with international mediators France, Russia and the United States to reach a ceasefire with Azerbaijan. While the three countries called for an end to hostilities, Turkey has staunchly supported its ally Azerbaijan and has repeated that what it called Armenian “occupiers” must withdraw.
“Superficial demands for an immediate end to hostilities and a permanent ceasefire will not be useful this time,” Mevlut Cavusoglu, Turkey’s foreign minister, was quoted as saying by Turkish state-run Anadolu news agency.
Both Azerbaijan and Turkey have repeatedly denied the involvement of Turkish forces in the fighting, as well as assertions by Armenia, Russia and France that Syrian rebels are fighting on the Azeri side.
Azerbaijan has also hit back, saying ethnic Armenians from the diaspora had been deployed or were on their way to operate as “foreign terrorist fighters” on the ethnic Armenian side.
Armenian sources have put the death toll from fighting in the region, where about 145,000 people live, at more than 200, while Azerbaijan most recently said that 19 civilians had been killed and 60 wounded.
Al Jazeera’s Bernard Smith reporting from Stepanakert, the main city in Nagorno-Karabakh, said “the mood has darkened considerably over the last 24 hours.”
“That is because the city has been hit twice now with a series of attacks of large scale weaponry in two episodes, and that is the first time that this has happened here since the war ended in 1994,” he said. “We’ve seen more women and children trying to leave the town and more civilians sheltering in bunkers.”
Meanwhile, Al Jazeera’s Sinem Koseoglu, reporting from the Azerbaijani town of Barda, said people displaced by the fighting were sheltering in public buildings such as schools.
“There are no places that they can stay, that’s why most of the public buildings are spared for the internally displaced,” she said. “[Up to] five families sharing one room, sharing one bathroom; they are saying they didn’t have anything with them, except for the clothes and their shoes, and they are waiting to go back when the attacks finish.”
In an interview with Al Jazeera, Pashinyan said Armenia is the guarantor of security in Nagorno-Karabakh.
“Azerbaijan launched a direct attack on Nagorno-Karabakh and Armenia has certain obligations to provide the security for the region,” the prime minister said.
“The September 27 Azerbaijan offensive began with shelling of civilian settlements and this is a fact we need to acknowledge. When there is an attack, the very first task is to protect from that aggression after which only it is possible to talk about negotiations.”
For his part, President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev said Armenia has not been interested in peace for the past three decades, after ethnic tensions increased following the collapse of the Soviet Union.
“They want to occupy our lands forever,” he told Al Jazeera’s Koseoglu. “If Armenia demonstrated goodwill and acted in compliance with many international resolutions, the conflict would have been resolved long ago.”
Azerbaijan and Armenia previously fought a war over Nagorno-Karabakh in the late 1980s and early 1990s as they transitioned into independent countries amid the collapse of the Soviet Union.
The war, which ended with a fragile peace treaty in 1994, is estimated to have killed tens of thousands of people, including more than a thousand civilians.
Armenia says it was Azerbaijan that reopened the conflict by launching a major offensive on September 27, while Baku says it was forced to respond to provocations by the other side.