Armenia unfairly blasted Israeli arms sales, Azerbaijani official says
“The Israel-Azerbaijan defense cooperation is over exaggerated” by Armenia to deliberately “undermine” the strong relations between his nation and Israel, said an aide to the Azeri president.
By TOVAH LAZAROFFDemonstrators supporting Armenia hold a sign protesting Israel's sale of arms to Azerbaijan in the military conflict over the breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh, in Brussels, Belgium October 7, 2020(photo credit: REUTERS/YVES HERMAN)
Armenia has unfairly targeted Israel for its sale of military drones to Azerbaijan, Hikmet Hajiyev, an aide to the Azeri president, told The Jerusalem Post over the weekend.“The Israel-Azerbaijan defense cooperation is over exaggerated” by Armenia to deliberately “undermine” the strong relations between his nation and the Jewish state, Hajiyev said.Earlier this month Armenia withdrew its ambassador to Israel, Armen Smbatyan, for consultations to protest the private arms sales from Israel to Azerbaijan, particularly drones, which have been used by the Azeri military in the fighting over the contested region of Nagorno-Karabakh.Smbatyan told the Post last week he believed Israel would soon halt such sales, but to date there is no public indication that such a step has been taken.Hajiyev, who is the head of Azerbaijan’s Foreign Policy Affairs Department of the Presidential Administration, said Armenia had not targeted Turkey or Russia in that same manner.Azerbaijan’s defense portfolio “is quite wide and quite diversified,” Hajiyev said, adding his country has used Turkish drones on the battlefield and that the bulk of its military equipment comes from Russia.“Why are they [Armenia] only highlighting Israel,” Hajiyev asked.Israel is a strategic partner of Azerbaijan and his country wants to keep that cooperation in the coming months and years, he said.“We do believe that all Armenia’s attempts to somehow try to effect Israel-Azerbaijan relations will be completely unsuccessful,” Hajiyev said.The Israel-Azerbaijan ties are not just a “matter of today, but is a matter of 1,000 years of partnership and friendship between Jewish people and Azerbaijani people,” Hajiyev said. These deep roots have been transformed into the cornerstone of the modern relationship between the two countries in all spheres of cooperation, he added.Under international law, Nagorno-Karabakh belongs to Azerbaijan, but it is populated and governed by ethnic Armenians and broke away in a 1991-94 war that killed about 30,000.The fighting between the two countries that renewed on September 27, has increased concern that Turkey, a close ally of Azerbaijan, and Russia, which has a defense pact with Armenia, could be sucked into the conflict, thereby regionalizing it.The clashes have also increased worries about the security of pipelines in Azerbaijan that carry natural gas and oil to Europe. Israel receives 40% of oil from Azerbaijan.Moscow fears Islamist militants will enter Nagorno-Karabakh and use it as a base for which to enter Russia.Stanislav Zas, who heads the Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO) that groups Russia and five other former Soviet republics, gave no details when he said it could intervene if Armenia's sovereignty were threatened.Hajiyev called on the international community to end the conflict by ensuring that the territory of Nagorno-Karabakh was returned to Azerbaijan.A fragile cease-fire that went into effect Saturday, but Armenia and Azerbaijan accused each other of swiftly and seriously violating the terms of a ceasefire in Nagorno-Karabakh, raising questions about how meaningful the truce, brokered by Russia, would turn out to be.The ceasefire, clinched after marathon talks in Moscow advocated by President Vladimir Putin, was meant to halt fighting to allow ethnic Armenian forces in Nagorno-Karabakh and Azeri forces to swap prisoners and war dead.The Armenian defense ministry accused Azerbaijan of shelling a settlement inside Armenia, while ethnic Armenian forces in Karabakh alleged that Azeri forces had launched a new offensive five minutes after the truce took hold.Azerbaijan said enemy forces in Karabakh were shelling Azeri territory. Both sides have consistently denied each others' assertions in what has also become a war of words accompanying the fighting.Azeri President Ilham Aliyev told Russia's RBC news outlet that the warring parties were now engaged in trying to find a political settlement, but suggested there would be further fighting ahead."We'll go to the very end and get what rightfully belongs to us," he said.Azeri Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov said the truce would last only for as long as it took for the Red Cross to arrange the exchange of the dead.Speaking at a briefing in Baku, he said Azerbaijan hoped and expected to take control of more territory in time.Armenia's foreign ministry said it was using all diplomatic channels to try to support the truce, while Nagorno-Karabakh's foreign ministry accused Azerbaijan of using ceasefire talks as cover to ready military action.In his conversation with the Post on Thursday Hajiyev accused Armenia of attempting to internationalize the conflict and said that his country was simply trying to end the occupation of its lands. He noted that the UN also considered that territory to be occupied.Among the provocations, he said, had been attacks on Azjerbaijan cities from the "sovereign territory of Armenia,” he said.Hajiyev called on the international community to end the conflict by ensuring that the territory of Nagorno-Karabakh was returned to Azerbaijan.Reuters contributed to this report.
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