Armenia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) has commented on the statement of a representative of the Azerbaijani foreign ministry, which contains territorial claims toward Armenia. The Armenian MFA provided a respective comment to Armenpress.

Question: Yesterday a representative of the Azerbaijani foreign ministry made a comment which contains territorial and historical claims towards Armenia. How do you assess such demands?

Armenia MFA: By making fake territorial and historical demands towards Armenia, the Azerbaijani side is trying to remove the Karabakh conflict from the international agenda on the one hand, and on the other hand, to create new threats for regional security and stability.

Trying to justify such fake agenda, the Azerbaijani side doesn’t hesitate to attribute obvious falsifications to the November 9 trilateral statement. If we derive from the logic of the Azerbaijani interpretation of the aforementioned document’s reference to the return of displaced persons, the Armenian refugees must return to Nakhichevan, Gandzak, Baku, Sumgait, and other territories of present-day Azerbaijan evicted from Armenians.

As for the historical claims towards Armenia made by the Azerbaijani MFA spokesperson, it’s difficult for us to perceive the Azerbaijani criteria of “historical” definition. We have to remind again that history can never be the strong side of a country whose both geographical and political name has one-century history, and the name “Azerbaijani” is even newer than that.

The efforts of Azerbaijani leadership to sow and maintain lasting enmity between the Armenian and Azerbaijani peoples are a constant threat to regional peace and security. Before accusing Armenia of revanchism, Azerbaijan must explain to the international community what the meaning is of the “trophy park” in Baku, which is nothing more than a shameful “monument” of revanchism and hatred.

Armenia will continue consistently acting from the positions of the exercise of the Artsakh [(Nagorno-Karabakh)] people’s right to self-determination, de-occupation of Artsakh territories which were subject to ethnic cleansing, and the return—in accordance with the November 9 trilateral statement—of the Armenian population to those territories. Only the resumption of the Karabakh peaceful settlement process under the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairmanship can create preconditions for lasting peace in the region.