NEWTIMES

Baku, 11 July 2021 – Newtimes.az

Only late at night did the alarming information come to the editorial office of Azeri Daily among the ambassadors of 46 states who had visited the cultural capital of our country -- the city of Shusha -- the day before at the invitation of the Azerbaijani government, there were no ambassadors of the three powers: the United States, France and Russia. The ambassadors of these countries did not accept the invitation of the Azerbaijani government and refused to go to Shusha.

As the Assistant to the President of Azerbaijan on Foreign Policy Hikmet Hajiyev, who accompanied the ambassadors on the trip to Shusha, told reporters that the visit of the diplomatic corps to the Karabakh capital was organised on the personal instructions of President Ilham Aliyev. And this voyage is the seventh trip to the liberated regions of Karabakh. Previously, the diplomatic corps visited Fuzuli, Zangilan, Jabrayil, Gubadli, Lachin and Aghdam.

Pay attention, we are talking about the co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group, who expressed a very strange consolidated position. And one has to guess about the motives of such a non-diplomatic demarche of the ambassadors. In all likelihood, the co-chairs, who still cherish the hope for the resumption of negotiations in the 'dead format of the Minsk Group,' did not want to burn the bridges with Yerevan. Although it is not completely clear what relation Shusha, whose population before the beginning of the Karabakh conflict was exclusively Azerbaijani, has to the Armenian population of Karabakh and Yerevan.

One way or another, this demarche will affect the future relations of Azerbaijan with these states. In any case, excluding France, Azerbaijan has built strategic partnerships with the United States and Russia. And such a position will cause serious damage in the eyes of the public to the future development of relations with these states. The insult was inflicted not on the government, but on the entire Azerbaijani public!

We had to deal with Washington's pro-Armenian position more than once. And how to explain the position of Russia, friendly to Azerbaijan, which acted as the only guarantor of a fair Karabakh settlement? Over the past decades, for the first time a Russian diplomat has shown such unenviable cohesion with the US ambassador. Did the Russian ambassador receive such instructions from the Kremlin?

Yesterday's demarche of the ambassadors of the great powers raises more questions than answers. After all, the purpose of the trip was a desire to show the world community the pearl of the South Caucasus culture shot by Armenian vandals.

In his speeches, Ilham Aliyev sincerely expressed the hope that the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs will direct all their efforts to eradicate the consequences of the monstrous war caused by the military aggression of Armenia. However, it seems that the co-chairing countries did not think about eliminating the consequences, but about aggravating the situation around the ongoing Armenian-Azerbaijani confrontation.