2023-09-30 19:47:00
Azerbaijan refutes any accusation of “ethnic cleansing” in Nagorno Karabakh and assures the inhabitants of the enclave that they are free to leave or stay, an adviser to the president told AFP.
On several occasions, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian has accused Baku of having carried out “ethnic cleansing” in the enclave, deserted of almost its entire population since the lightning offensive led by Azerbaijan.
Ten days after its military victory, Baku assures that its army has “not entered” Stepanakert, the “capital” of the separatist enclave still inaccessible to the press.
“We are deliberately refraining from putting up Azerbaijani flags, we know that there are still civilians and we know their fears,” Hikmet Hajiyev, diplomatic advisor to President Ilham Aliyev, declared in an interview with AFP.
Security forces are deployed there to protect certain sites, particularly religious sites, according to Baku.
Negotiations between Azerbaijani officials and those in charge of the enclave on the transition are planned for Monday in Stepanakert, AFP has learned.
After Baku’s lightning victory and capitulation on September 20, the self-proclaimed separatist republic of Nagorno Karabakh announced its dissolution on January 1, 2024, more than 30 years after its creation.
A transition period is now planned by Azerbaijan.
“The negotiations are productive, with the issue of disarmament as a priority,” said the Azerbaijani official.
While Yerevan speaks of a series of “illegal arrests” and residents have fled for fear of reprisals, Baku claims to have arrested “5 to 6 officials” whom it accuses of “war crimes ” and having taken “no prisoners”.
‘Reintegration’
“We know that the Armenians and the international media are saying that we are going to arrest all the soldiers. If they give up their arms, they are free and have the choice to leave for the Republic of Armenia,” specifies the president’s advisor.
Hikmet Hajiyev – voice of the country among international interlocutors – insists that the doors are open to both Armenia and Azerbaijan, with a “reintegration” program put in place by the authorities for those who would like to stay.
“The majority of them say that they cannot live under the flag of Azerbaijan, I can respect that, even if it is not justified,” argued the senior official.
Nagorno Karabakh, with a Christian majority, seceded from Muslim-majority Azerbaijan upon the disintegration of the USSR.
He opposed Baku for more than three decades with the support of Yerevan, notably during two wars between 1988 and 1994 and in the fall of 2020.
Asked about the flight of almost all Armenian civilians from the enclave, Mr. Hajiyev rejects the term “ethnic cleansing”, believing that these departures are free and that there has not been “the slightest case of violence” documented since September.
“Azerbaijan wants to see Nagorno Karabakh become a flourishing, prosperous and above all, peaceful region, like 30 years ago,” he says.
30/09/2023 19:45:32 – Baku (AFP) – © 2023 AFP
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