President Ilham Aliyev accused the US Congress members of resorting to a hostile rhetoric against Azerbaijan, referring to a recent letter by sixty congressmen to Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
President Aliyev said the signatories of the letter were pro-Armenian members of the US Congress, supporting a policy of hostility toward Azerbaijan.
“It is a dirty appeal that cannot influence our will. However, what does this show? It shows that the policy of hostility towards us does not stop. When I looked at that appeal, I guessed that both its author and addressee were the same. Because its addressee is the US Secretary of State. But I have no doubt that this appeal was also written in the US Department of State,” he said in a meeting with the residents in the liberated Jabrayil district last week.
President Aliyev deemed the letter false and biased given its baseless accusations against Azerbaijan by recalling the outcomes of the 2020 war with Armenia and the anti-terrorist operation in the Karabakh (Garabagh) region of Azerbaijan in 2023.
On October 3, sixty US Congress members, led by Representative Frank Pallone and Senator Ed Markey, have signed a letter urging Biden’s administration to take decisive action against Azerbaijan before the COP29 global climate summit in November.
The congressmen significantly focused on the termination of the illegal armed separatist rule in the Karabakh region by the Azerbaijan Armed Forces in 2023, labelling it as the “ethnic cleansing”.
President Aliyev said Azerbaijan has restored its territorial integrity and sovereignty in the wake of the 2020 war with Armenia and the anti-terrorist operation in the Karabakh region in 2023, adamantly rejecting accusations of ethnic cleansing and war crimes.
“Look at the Russia-Ukraine war today; what do Western states, France, America, and others say? They say that Ukraine's territorial integrity must be restored, and Ukraine must use weapons. They provide all kinds of weapons to Ukraine. Well, why was the attitude different towards our occupied lands? After all, our territorial integrity was also violated. One million people became homeless. Who was helping us? While one million people were living in wagons, dormitories, kindergartens, and tents, why was such duplicity displayed? We demand answers to these questions. But where do we see the answer? Again in the anti-Azerbaijani actions,” stated the president of Azerbaijan.
Armenia and Azerbaijan had been locked in a bloody conflict, which began in the late 1980s. The growing anti-Azerbaijan sentiments in Armenia were based on illegal claims to Azerbaijan’s historic Karabakh region. Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, Armenia launched a full-scale military aggression against Azerbaijan. The bloody war, which lasted until a ceasefire in 1994, resulted in Armenia occupying 20 percent of Azerbaijan’s internationally recognized territories. This occupation led to the deaths of over 30,000 Azerbaijanis and the expulsion of one million in a brutal ethnic cleansing campaign conducted by Armenia.
The conflict escalated on September 27, 2020, when Armenian forces illegally deployed in the occupied Azerbaijani lands began shelling military positions and civilian settlements of Azerbaijan. The Azerbaijani army promptly launched a counter-offensive to repel Armenia’s attack, liberating over 300 settlements, including the cities of Jabrayil, Fuzuli, Zangilan, Gubadli, and Shusha, from nearly 30 years of illegal Armenian occupation.
The war concluded with a tripartite statement signed on November 10, 2020, by Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Russia. Under the statement, Armenia also returned the occupied Aghdam, Kalbajar, and Lachin districts to Azerbaijan. As a result of the war, Azerbaijan restored its territorial integrity.
However, the post-war situation in the Karabakh region remained fragile due to frequent armed provocations by the Armenian military and illegal armed formations in the region. Azerbaijani army positions in the liberated territories, including the posts on the conditional border with Armenia, were targeted almost daily, leading to periodical fatal escalations, including the bloody border clashes in 2021 and 2022. Moreover, the illegal Armenian separatist forces in the Karabakh region intensively fortified their positions and strongholds with materiel supplied by Armenia, despite the continuous warnings by Baku.
Azerbaijan Armed Forces conducted local anti-terrorist measures on September 19-20, 2023, which ended in the neutralization of illegal Armenian armed formations and their military infrastructure in the Karabakh region, ultimately leading to the full restoration of Azerbaijan’s sovereignty.
Following the collapse of the illegal Armenian separatist regime, the ethnic Armenian residents of the Karabakh region voluntarily left the region although the authorities of Azerbaijan repeatedly called to stay and reintegrate.