Azerbaijan called Pelosi’s remarks “Armenian propaganda” and “an attempt to appease Armenian-Americans ahead of the US midterm elections.”
The Speaker of the US House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, is making a symbolic three-day visit to Armenia, a few days after the bloody fighting on the border with Azerbaijan.
Pelosi – the highest-ranking US official to visit the country since its independence in 1991 – strongly condemned what she called “unlawful” and “murderous” attacks by Azerbaijan against Armenia that have killed more than 200 people.
During the visit, Pelosi visited the Armenian Genocide memorial in Yerevan and during the laying of flowers, she could not contain her emotion and started to cry.
Pelosi cries as she visits Armenian Genocide monument and then condemns Azerbaijan’s recent attacks to Armenia as “illegal” pic.twitter.com/8j3qOtKeBJ
— Ragıp Soylu (@ragipsoylu) September 18, 2022
The speaker of the US House of Representatives called her visit “a strong symbol of the steadfast commitment of the United States to a peaceful, prosperous and democratic Armenia and to a stable and secure Caucasus region.”
More than 200 people have been killed in recent fighting between Armenian and Azeri troops, which the two sides blame each other for. These conflicts broke out on Tuesday and ended with international mediation on Thursday night.
Moscow is Armenia’s biggest military ally, with a military base in northern Armenia and peacekeepers along the line of trenches, known as the Line of Contact, in Nagorno-Karabakh, which Armenia and Azerbaijan fought over in 2020.
Strong reactions from Baku
Her comments provoked an unusually angry reaction from Baku, which announced that Pelosi was endangering peace in the Caucasus.
“Pelosi’s unsubstantiated and unfair accusations against Azerbaijan are unacceptable,” the State Department said in a statement.
“This is a serious blow to efforts to normalize Armenia-Azerbaijan relations,” the ministry notes, calling Pelosi’s comments “Armenian propaganda.”
Azerbaijan reiterated its position that the clashes are the result of a “large-scale military provocation” by Armenia, a narrative rejected by Yerevan, adding that Pelosi’s comments were an attempt to appease Armenian-Americans ahead of midterm elections in USA.
“It is unacceptable to transfer the internal political intrigues of the American agenda and lobby interests to the South Caucasus region through Armenia,” Azerbaijan said, calling Pelosi’s comments dangerous.
This kind of clear attribution of responsibility for the conflicts between the two countries exceeds the limits of what the American Foreign Ministry has so far declared publicly.
US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken has expressed concern over the clashes, calling for calm without assigning blame to any side.
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