In the conflict of Nagorno-Karabakh , the Azeri region occupied by neighboring Armenia since 1992, the only way to achieve peace is for the Yerevan government to abide to the relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions and withdraw its military forces, said Mammad Talibov , chargé d’affaires of the Republic of Azerbaijan in Mexico .
The issue has been hotly debated in Mexico after the visit to the self-proclaimed Republic of Nagorno Karabakh -renamed last year as Artsakh by the separatists- made in October by three mexican opposition federal deputies, Margarita Blanca Cuata Domínguez from left National Regeneration Movement Party ( MORENA ), María Cristina García Bravo and Carlos Hernández Mirón from left Democratic Revolutionary Party ( PRD ), who did not asked the authorization of the Azerbaijani government.
In reaction, Talibov presented a protest to the mexican Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores, SRE) and to the Congress; days later, Ará Aivazian , Armenian ambassador in Mexico, justified the invitation to the lawmakers and said, in an interview with EL UNIVERSAL , that they did not need any permission from Baku, praising their “political courage” displayed with the trip.
However, “I was very surprised when the Armenian government and the Armenian ambassador dragged, involved Mexican lawmakers (into the Nagorno Karabakh dispute), because we have nothing against the relation between Mexico and Armenia and we know they have a group of friendship, but unfortunately, the Armenian ambassador wanted to expose them or to use them for gaining some points in the political arena without their knowledge”, stated Talibov.
Speaking with EL UNIVERSAL in the Azeri embassy in Mexico City, the diplomat affirmed “that ignoring the travel warnings of the SRE and ignoring that Nagorno Karabakh is a international recognized territory of Azerbaijan, they were dragged, they were put on the camera with the flag of some entity that no one in the world or even the armenians recognize, and tried to create the illusion, the image that Mexico recognize this separatist region, which is not true”.
Unprecedented and awful
Talibov went to the SRE and the Chamber of Deputies to protest “and they supported the integrity of our country according to the UN Security Council resolutions. Unfortunately, the Armenian ambassador tried to do another game, this is unprecedented and awful, he calls citizens of Mexico to ignore their Foreign Ministry’s travel warning”, he said. “I think the Armenian ambassador should stop this games, he talks about human rights and never says why so many people were expelled from their houses, killed and abused”, he went on to state that in the Tlaxcoaque Square in Mexico City there is a memorial dedicated to the victims of the Khojaly massacre in 1992, when over 600 ethnic Azerbaijani civilians were killed.
Regarding the declarations of the Armenian ambassador to Mexico, Ará Aivazian, about the danger of a new Armenian genocide in Nagorno Karabakh similar to the one that took place after the fall of the Ottoman Empire in the 20th century, he said that “it is a totally different issue and it has nothing to do. This is out of ethics, Azerbaijan is a multicultural country known by its tolerance , we have Ashkenazi and Sephardic, Orthodox and Catholic, Sunni and Shia communities, we have an Armenian church in the middle of Baku”.
Azerbaijan and Armenia were part of the Ottoman Empire and then of the Soviet Union; after the disintegration of the latter, both countries proclaimed its independence but war erupted in Nagorno Karabakh in 1988-1994.
Talibov also highlighted the good relation between Azerbaijan and Mexico. “We are celebrating 25 years of the establishment of diplomatic relations and I think we can definitely do more things, because the two countries are always supporting each other in many multilateral spheres of cooperation and are founding members in Geneva of the United Nations Human Rights Council”, he said.
Just like Mexico, the Caspian basin nation is well known by its rich oil sector; the first industrial oil well in the world was drilled in Azerbaijan 200 hundred years ago and nowadays the country is recovering from the wave of lower export prices, with the World Bank forecasting a GDP growth of 2 to 3% next year backed by the potential of other areas like infrastructure, tourism, technology, railways and maritime regional transportation, added Talibov.
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