Azerbaijan blames Armenia for aggravating situation on state border

By Azernews

By Vugar Khalilov

The Azerbaijani Defense Ministry has said that the Armenian military-political leadership bears full responsibility for aggravating situation on the state border, Azernews reports per the ministry.

The ministry stated on its website that during the night of June 29, the Armenian military units from their positions in the direction of Basarkechar region’s Zarkand and Azizli settlements using various calibres of weapons subjected to intense fire the Azerbaijani army positions located in Kalbajar region’s Yukahri Ayrim village.

Units of the Azerbaijani army took appropriate retaliatory measures to suppress the opposite side, the report added.

It should be noted that Armenia periodically shells Azerbaijani military positions on its liberated territories. The previous truce violation was recorded on June 24 on the state border in Lachin.

To recap, on May 22, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, European Council President Charles Michel, and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan met in Brussels. After the meeting, Michel said that Azerbaijan and Armenia agreed on a number of key issues, including the creation of border delimitation commissions, of which the first meeting was held on May 24.

Earlier, Ilham Aliyev stated that peace will return to the Caucasus based on the five principles Baku recently proposed for normalizing relations with Armenia.

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan's recent inflammatory comments accusing Azerbaijan of planning a new war in the region was categorically repudiated by official Baku.

The Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry stressed that if Armenia truly desires peace, it must demonstrate political will and take genuine efforts toward peace, rather than waste time resurrecting the format of which the efficiency was always poor, and this has now been publicly admitted.

“We remind PM Pashinyan that Azerbaijan has been a supporter and initiator of the normalization of relations between the two countries after the liberation of its territories, despite the aggressive policy and the approach of 'destroying everything' applied by Armenia for decades. The President of Azerbaijan proposed to sign a peace agreement based on strict adherence to the principles of international law in the post-conflict phase. The Azerbaijani side even presented to the other side the fundamental principles on which the agreement should be based. If Azerbaijan wanted a war, as Pashinyan claims, these steps would probably not be needed. If Azerbaijan wanted a fight, it would not have made great efforts to rebuild and restore the territories destroyed by Armenia for 30 years,” the ministry stressed.