Yerevan expects the United States to "adequate respond" to Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev's recent words about Baku being able to carry out any kind of operation in the breakaway Nagorno-Karabakh region, the Armenian Foreign Ministry said on Wednesday

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik – 31st May, 2023) Yerevan expects the United States to "adequate respond" to Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev's recent words about Baku being able to carry out any kind of operation in the breakaway Nagorno-Karabakh region, the Armenian Foreign Ministry said on Wednesday.

On Sunday, Aliyev said that Azerbaijan is able to conduct any operation in the breakaway region and called for the dissolution of the unrecognized republic's parliament and surrender of its president. Yerevan regarded the statement as a threat of ethnic purges, while US State Department spokesman Matthew Miller applauded Aliyev's willingness to consider amnesties for Karabakh deputies.

"We believe that the United States, based on its own values of democracy and human rights protection and its commitment and involvement in the establishment of lasting peace in the region, should adequately respond to these statements in order to prevent … attempts of ethnic cleansing in Nagorno Karabakh," the Armenian Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

The ministry added that Aliyev's words not only had offered no "dignified solutions" to the regional problems, but had also contained direct threats to Armenia's independence and sovereignty, as well as to the right of the people of Nagorno-Karabakh.

The statement emphasized that the recognition of Azerbaijani territorial integrity by Armenia did not give Baku the "authority to carry out ethnic cleansing and arbitrariness against the people of Nagorno-Karabakh."

"In the process of normalization of relations between Armenia and Azerbaijan, both the recognition of each other's territorial integrity and … addressing the rights and security of the people of Nagorno Karabakh are key," the Armenian Foreign Ministry's statement read.

On May 25, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and Aliyev visited Moscow and confirmed the mutual recognition of each other's territorial integrity, with Nagorno-Karabakh as part of Azerbaijan.

The decades-long conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh flared up in September 2020, marking the worst escalation since the 1990s. Hostilities ended with a Russia-brokered trilateral ceasefire declaration signed in November 2020. The two former Soviet states agreed to the deployment of Russian peacekeepers in the region. Since then, there have been occasional clashes along the border.

https://www.urdupoint.com/en/world/yerevan-expects-us-to-adequately-respond-to-1700633.html