Armenia’s foreign ministry continued to sound the alarm on a potential military attack by Azerbaijan, saying that Baku will use the upcoming United Nations Climate Summit (COP29) as a smokescreen to launch an attack on Armenia.
Armenia’s foreign ministry spokesperson Ani Badalyan told Armenpress that Baku has not publicly responded to her questions about whether Azerbaijan is planning to attack Armenia or whether the authorities there are attempting to torpedo the peace deal. Instead, she said, Baku is increasing its threats against Armenia.
“Official Baku’s aggressive rhetoric and refusal to sign the peace treaty that includes the agreed-upon articles have made many Armenian and international experts conclude that Azerbaijan will use COP-29 to create a smokescreen for attempting to legitimize its future escalation of the situation,” Badalyan told the Armenpress news agency.
“Many analysts believe that ruling out such a prospect requires the signing of the agreed-upon content of the peace treaty ahead of COP-29, otherwise the leaders heading to Baku can unwittingly become instigators of war. In its turn, Armenia says it is ready to sign the peace treaty ahead of COP-29,” the spokesperson added.
“I would like to underscore that the Republic of Armenia endorsed the decision to hold COP-29 in Baku as a gesture to establish trust between the two parties and peace in the region, and we would not want it to be used for the opposite purpose,” Badalyan emphasized.
She had posed the questions on Friday, while attempting to stress that Armenia had no territorial claims from Azerbaijan, as has been suggested by President Ilham Aliyev of Azerbaijan and other high-ranking officials in his government.
Instead, Azerbaijan’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson, Aykhan Hajizada, responded to Badalyan saying that the commitment expressed by Armenia to the Almaty Declaration, being used as the basis for delimiting borders between the two countries, still did not signal that Armenia did not have territorial demands from Azerbaijan. Haizada explained that the Almaty Declaration does not cover the issue about where the borders of CIS member states pass and which territories belong to which country.
Badalyan called Hajizada’s statements “inappropriate,” saying that the December 21, 1991 Almaty Declaration clearly stipulates that the parties recognize each other’s territorial integrity and the inviolability of the existing borders. “Therefore, the signatory countries of the Almaty Declaration have recognized the integrity of the de-jure territories of Soviet republics at the time of the USSR collapse and the de-jure existing inter-republican administrative borders as state borders.”
“And these borders are well known, and the maps that reflect these borders exist in both Armenia and Azerbaijan. By the way, the wording of the peace treaty stipulating that the parties are bound to not have territorial demands against each other in the future dispel the claims made by Azerbaijan that Armenia has a ‘reserve option’ for presenting territorial demands against Azerbaijan,” Badalyan added.
“The comment on the Almaty Declaration made by the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry spokesperson can actually mean that Azerbaijan itself has territorial demands against Armenia and is simply trying to create a smokescreen with accusations against Armenia,” Badalyan emphasized.
In his statement, Hajizada also called Armenia’s recent acquisition of arms “mass militarization.”
“If we compare the military expenditures of Armenia and Azerbaijan by both absolute numbers and proportionality, and the types of armaments, we will see who is actually carrying out mass militarization,” Badalyan stressed. “Meanwhile, the Azerbaijani highest leadership has said that strengthening their military capabilities is their main objective.”
“It is worth recalling that Armenia on numerous occasions has offered and still continues to offer Azerbaijan to create mutual arms control mechanisms, but Azerbaijan continues to leave this offer unanswered and has adopted a growing aggressive rhetoric against the Republic of Armenia,” the Armenian foreign ministry spokesperson said.
“I reiterate that the Republic of Armenia does not have any aggressive agenda, any agenda other than defending itself from possible aggressions. Whereas Azerbaijan makes almost daily threats against the Republic of Armenia,” she added.
In his statement, Hajizada also claimed that the recent ruling by Armenia’s Constitutional Court that validated a recent agreement on border delimitation between Yerevan and Baku “further underscores” the territorial claims against Azerbaijan in the Armenian Constitution.
Badalyan explained that the ruling by Armenia’s Constitutional Court “very clearly and directly says that only the provisions of the 1990 Armenian Declaration of Independence that are expressed verbatim in the Armenian Constitution’s articles have constitutional power. And therefore, it is not possible to attribute something to the Constitution that’s not written in the Constitution’s text that follows the preamble.”
“The Armenian statehood’s fundamental principles and national goals mentioned in the preamble of the Armenian Constitution are those that are expressed in the subsequent text of the Constitution, and it contains nothing that is possible to interpret as a territorial demand directed against any country,” Badalyan said.
“The agreed-upon part of the draft treaty On the Establishment of Peace and Interstate Relations between Armenia and Azerbaijan contains an article stipulating that the parties don’t have territorial demands against each other and are bound not to make such demands in the future,” she added.
“There is also an article that none of the parties can cite their internal legislation for failure to implement the peace treaty. Meaning, when the peace treaty is signed by Armenia and Azerbaijan, then receives the approval by the Constitutional Court about its compliance with the Constitution and then gets ratified by the National Assembly, it will gain higher legal force than any internal law,” Badalyan explained.
“Therefore, the signing of the peace treaty will dispel all concerns of both Armenia and Azerbaijan regarding various legislative acts of the two countries, in case of such,” she added.
