French nod to region riles Azerbaijan
BAKU, Azerbaijan — Azerbaijani officials have criticized a resolution adopted by the French Senate that urges the French government to recognize the separatist region of Nagorno-Karabakh as an independent republic.
The resolution, adopted Wednesday, is symbolic and does not mean the French government will recognize a sovereign Nagorno-Karabakh, but it sends a message of support to France’s large Armenian community. No U.N. member state recognizes the region, over which Armenia and Azerbaijan have been locked in a decades-long conflict, as independent.
Nevertheless, the move elicited anger in Azerbaijan, which has previously criticized France for taking a “pro-Armenian” stand in the dispute.
Several dozen people protested in front of the French Embassy in the capital, Baku, on Thursday, chanting “France, be fair!” Azerbaijan’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement late Wednesday that the document can be seen only “as a provocation” and stressed that it “has no legal force.”
Azerbaijani presidential aide Hikmet Hajiyev denounced the resolution Thursday as a “piece of paper adopted to serve narrow political ambitions,” and said France’s “open pro-Armenian position … has become one of the main factors hindering the peaceful resolution of the conflict.”
Azerbaijan’s parliament urged the country’s government to reach out to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe to revoke France’s status as co-chairman of the Minsk Group set up by the Organization to mediate the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. The parliament also called on the government “to reconsider existing political relations” with France.