Armenian Foreign Affairs Minister Ararat Mirzoyan last Thursday made a phone call to Foreign Minister Ian Borg pleading for Malta’s support in its impasse with Azerbaijan, which has seen a humanitarian crisis unfold among the 120,000 population of the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region.
Azerbaijan has currently blockaded the Lachin corridor leading to Nagorno-Karabakh and Mirzoyan’s appeal to Borg comes just after a United Nations group of experts found the blockade “has left the population facing acute shortages of food staples, medication, and hygiene products”.
The UN also found Azerbaijan’s blockade has “impacted the functioning of medical and educational institutions, and placed the lives of the residents – especially children, persons with disabilities, older persons, pregnant women, and the sick – at significant risk”.
Malta enjoys a comfortable commercial and diplomatic relationship with Azerbaijan.
Azerbaijan’s state oil company, SOCAR, is a shareholder in Malta’s main power station, the corruption-riddled ElectroGas plant in Delimara, and Malta is also still at the beginning of an 18-year LNG supply agreement with SOCAR for the power station.
Over and above that, former prime minister Joseph Muscat is a regular visitor to Baku, where he is a member of Azerbaijani strongman Ilham Aliyev’s Nizami Ganjavi International Centre (NGIC).
Muscat has been a member of the NGIC since 2020 joining after his protracted December 2019 resignation from the office of the prime minister.
The think tank was founded by Azerbaijani leader Ilham Aliyev and is funded by the Azerbaijani government, with which Muscat fostered a cosy relationship while in power.
Muscat was there last June for an event entitled ‘Reconstruction, Reconciliation, and Integration: Energy, Economy, Environment and Equity’.
Its opening ceremony included a video about Azerbaijani lands that had been ‘liberated’ from occupation. Ostensibly, these lands are those contested as part of the protracted Armenia-Azerbaijan war which has seen tens of thousands killed.
Azerbaijan’s blockade of the Lachin corridor and the ensuing humanitarian crisis forms part of the latest hostilities that Aliyev claims to have liberated.
Armenian Foreign Affairs Minister Ararat Mirzoyan last Thursday made a phone call to Foreign Minister Ian Borg pleading for Malta’s support in its impasse with Azerbaijan, which has seen a humanitarian crisis unfold among the 120,000 population of the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region.
Azerbaijan has currently blockaded the Lachin corridor leading to Nagorno-Karabakh and Mirzoyan’s appeal to Borg comes just after a United Nations group of experts found the blockade “has left the population facing acute shortages of food staples, medication, and hygiene products”.
The UN also found Azerbaijan’s blockade has “impacted the functioning of medical and educational institutions, and placed the lives of the residents – especially children, persons with disabilities, older persons, pregnant women, and the sick – at significant risk”.
Malta enjoys a comfortable commercial and diplomatic relationship with Azerbaijan.
Azerbaijan’s state oil company, SOCAR, is a shareholder in Malta’s main power station, the corruption-riddled ElectroGas plant in Delimara, and Malta is also still at the beginning of an 18-year LNG supply agreement with SOCAR for the power station.
Over and above that, former prime minister Joseph Muscat is a regular visitor to Baku, where he is a member of Azerbaijani strongman Ilham Aliyev’s Nizami Ganjavi International Centre (NGIC).
Muscat has been a member of the NGIC since 2020 joining after his protracted December 2019 resignation from the office of the prime minister.
The think tank was founded by Azerbaijani leader Ilham Aliyev and is funded by the Azerbaijani government, with which Muscat fostered a cosy relationship while in power.
Muscat was there last June for an event entitled ‘Reconstruction, Reconciliation, and Integration: Energy, Economy, Environment and Equity’.
Its opening ceremony included a video about Azerbaijani lands that had been ‘liberated’ from occupation. Ostensibly, these lands are those contested as part of the protracted Armenia-Azerbaijan war which has seen tens of thousands killed.
Azerbaijan’s blockade of the Lachin corridor and the ensuing humanitarian crisis forms part of the latest hostilities that Aliyev claims to have liberated.
https://theshiftnews.com/2023/08/14/armenia-in-diplomatic-plea-with-malta-for-action-on-azerbaijan-blockade-crisis/